


Wires

by solynacea



Category: Devil May Cry
Genre: Alternate Universe - Detectives, Angst, Dark, Eventual Romance, Eventual Smut, F/F, F/M, Gore, Horror, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Serial Killers, Supernatural Elements, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-10
Updated: 2020-11-17
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:01:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 21,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26933278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/solynacea/pseuds/solynacea
Summary: In Red Grave City, a serial killer stalks the streets. Lirael Thorne, recently transferred from Fortuna and looking for an escape from her past, winds up on his trail. Hunting him with her veteran partner, Dante Redgrave, they try to piece together the wires that bind the three of them together. In a race to catch him before he leaves more victims in his wake, the things thought buried will come to the surface, tearing lives and comfort apart.
Relationships: Dante (Devil May Cry)/Original Female Character(s), Dante/Lir, Dante/Lirael Thorne, Implied Lady/Trish, Implied Vergil/Original Female Character(s), implied Nero/Kyrie - Relationship
Comments: 4
Kudos: 17





	1. A Fresh Start

**Author's Note:**

> The idea for this story came from a dream. Most of my stories do, and with how much true crime I ingest on a daily basis, it's no surprise that I'd dream of a Red Grave City where a serial killer stalked the streets and a weary detective was trying to catch him. My wonderful beta, [lickitysplit](http://archiveofourown.org/users/lickitysplit), helped me flesh it out; usually my dream ideas are left alone, but this was one of the ones that stuck with me, and it's thanks to her that it became something more than a talking point between us. 
> 
> This story comes with a myriad of warnings. Some of them fit the universe of _Devil May Cry:_ violence, blood, gore, startling or frightening imagery. Because it's an AU, it's also got its own: body mutilation, references of drug use and implied alcoholism, murder. A lot of my inspiration for this comes from the works of Thomas Harris, Dean Koontz, and Stephen King. It's dark, not entirely happy (though there are happy moments), and I tried to make everyone as realistic as I could. The title for this work was drawn from the song _Wires_ by The Neighborhood.
> 
> I'm very excited to bring this story to you, and, as always, I hope that you get as much enjoyment from reading it as I did from writing it.

_“Everybody has a geography that can be used for change;  
that is why we travel to far off places. Whether we know it or not,   
we need to renew ourselves in territories that are fresh and wild.   
We need to come home through the body of alien lands.” _ _  
_ — Joan Halifax

»»————- ⚜ ————-««

Holding an aspirin tablet between her teeth, craving a drink, Lir listens to the clacking of the keyboard and blinks against the watery light streaming between the blinds. The office of Red Grave’s chief of police is smaller than the one in Fortuna, but neater: gone are the numerous potted plants, the maps and spreadsheets tacked to every available surface, the bookcases littered with little knick-knacks and family photographs. Those personal touches have been ignored in favor of something that is neat, organized, the little bit of warmth the room has coming from the soft bulb of the desk lamp and the mahogany of the furniture. It’s a bit of a relief, really. Sanctus had been old—too old, in the opinion of many—and took on a fatherly role that often left Lir feeling chafed and angry. At least here, going from first impressions, there will be no blurring of the line between duty and her personal life. 

Seated with his back rod-straight is her new superior. A gold nameplate on the desk reads _J.D. Morrison,_ and as he reads whatever file he’s pulled up on his monitor, Lir wonders what the initials stand for. _James Dean_ is her first thought, and she finally crunches the aspirin, using the bitter flavor to smother her budding laughter. Sure, yeah, why not? Red Grave is a big city, and maybe Morrison’s parents had been so attached to the ill-fated actor that they’d saddled their son with his name. Certainly wouldn’t be the strangest thing she’s heard of. 

“Detective Thorne,” Morrison says. He opens a drawer and pulls out a cigar, which he lights in clear disregard of the signs posted on the doors to the building. “Says here you transferred out for personal reasons.”

“Yessir.” The dull throbbing behind her temples grows at the scent of smoke. “Wanted a change of scenery.”

He coughs, clears his throat. “That so? Well, we’ve had people do it for less. Though your track record . . . You seem to have been on a fast path to promotion. ” Lir says nothing. The expectant silence stretches between them until it turns uncomfortable, but she’s not in any particular mood for niceties. She has an apartment to unpack and a bitch of a headache brewing and she wants to get this introduction over with as quickly as she can. Finally, Morrison sighs, silver plumes curling through the air. “Normally, you’d get a tour and time to sort out your desk, but we got a call this morning and it’s all hands on deck. You up to fieldwork?”

His shrewd gaze rephrases that question nicely. _You willing to actually work?_ “Sure.”

Morrison studies her for a few seconds longer, then nods and stands up, raising his voice to a shout that makes her wince. “Officer Simmons!”

A young man with untidy white hair tucked messily under his cap stumbles in. “Yes, Chief?”

“Take Detective Thorne here to the alley.” Simmons’ face pales, and Morrison barks, “Now!”

“Yes, Chief!” Simmons snaps into a hasty salute before scurrying out of the office.

Lir gives one of her own to Morrison and follows, feeling a sort of bemused pity for the officer. She’d been there once, bright-eyed and eager to please, thinking that the law enforcement they showed on television, with its friendly camaraderie and kind-yet-stern chiefs, was the truth of it. Simmons must still be clinging to that, and she pops another aspirin into her mouth and chews it as they weave through the bullpen to the doors that lead outside. 

Simmons doesn’t say much, though he opens her door when they reach the cruiser, flushing under her raised brow, and his uneasy quiet persists well into the ride. _Definitely fresh,_ Lir thinks. _Probably still spit shines his shoes in the morning and tells people he’s a cop with pride._ The thought is bitter, and angry, and distasteful. Not that it really bothers her anymore; her mind has been particularly not tasty as of late.

They drive through cramped, winding streets that turn unexpectedly into one-ways and cross over themselves into a maze, closed in by the dingy buildings until it all feels more than a little claustrophobic. Red Grave City is coastal, just like Fortuna, but it’s much larger, with more crime, and rumors of rampant corruption and greased pockets give it an unsavory reputation with other law enforcement agencies. Yet in stark contrast, it’s as much of a tourist hotspot as Fortuna, its historic district and scenic parks and ritzy downtown drawing numerous crowds every year, regardless of the season. Lir takes all of it in, the cafès and hotels and convenience stores fighting for space, their colorful signs and banners almost garish against the dull brick, and it’s not until they pass into a more modern area with skyscrapers of steel and glass that she decides to ask where the hell Simmons is taking her to.

“What’s in this alley?”

Simmons jumps, the wheel jerking under his hands and sending them partially over the white lines. A minivan behind them lays on the horn, and Lir watches the driver raise his middle finger as he speeds by once Simmons has corrected. “Sorry, ma’am. Uh, Detective. I thought the Chief filled you in.”

“No.” She straightens. “Just that it’s serious.”

“That’s one way to put it,” he mumbles. “Mind if I smoke?”

“Yes.” The sight of his momentary pout sends irritation flaring hot and thick along her spine. Lir swallows it and rubs her temples. “Just crack the damn window.”

“Sure thing.” He does, and then reaches for a pack on the dash and. Drawing a cigarette from it, he says, “Call came in maybe twenty minutes before you showed up. Jane Doe found in an alley. She, uh . . . Well, it might be better for you to see for yourself, but it’s . . .”  
  
His fingers tremble as he tries to flick his lighter. Lir takes pity on him and pulls her own from her coat, and he smiles gratefully as she holds it to his cigarette, though his face is pallid and shiny with sweat. “First body?” At his nod, she sighs. “You’ve probably heard it gets easier.”

“Does it?” Simmons looks at her hopefully.

Lir snorts. “No. Eyes on the road.”

He retreats into a silence that’s not quite sullen, leaving her to her thoughts. Which mostly center around whether or not she’ll have time to find a new bar, one of the nice and private ones where no one wants to get friendly or gives a shit that she’s a cop, only that she pays her tab. When they arrive at the crime scene, Simmons stays in the car, looking ready to puke. Lir raps on the door once it’s closed and jerks her chin, signalling for him to head out, and she waits until he gives a shaky thumbs up and pulls away from the curb to head towards the yellow tape strung between a nightclub on one side and a sports bar on the other. An officer at the corner stops her until she shows her badge, then lifts the tape for her to step beneath. Immediately, she’s assaulted by the wet, mossy stench of death and viscera, and she takes the gloves and shoe covers and slides them on to buy herself time to adjust to it.

Cops swarm outside of the alley, keeping the rabid press contained. Inside, there’s only four others, three men and a woman, but Lir ignores them in favor of taking in all that she can before she’s forced to talk. Four dumpsters are present, two on each wall with the city’s waste disposal logo printed on the side; bits of trash and litter surround them: used condoms, soda cans, scraps of newspaper, all of the usual findings. There’s no spray paint graffiti, and a security camera faces out into the busy street. Maybe they’ll get something useful from it, though she doubts it. In her experience, they’re usually for show, just a weak-hearted attempt to prevent crime or a way to deter violence on the premises of businesses who host rowdy crowds. 

The scenery accounted for, Lir turns her attention to the misshapen body in the center. Nude and pale, the woman is covered from chest to knee in red that’s gone black with time, her unseeing eyes staring at the sky with a terror that won’t disappear until the medical examiner closes them on the slab. She walks towards her, offal and iron making her throat constrict against nausea, and the woman kneeling next to the corpse looks up at her approach with a friendly nod. Dressed in a black jumpsuit, she’s no doubt the M.E., or someone affiliated with them, and she stays quiet as Lir kneels to fully take in the mutilation inflicted on the victim.

While the rest of her is untouched, her throat is slashed, and she’s been split open from rib to hip, the skin and muscle peeled away to reveal her organs beneath. As far as Lir can tell, nothing has been removed, but _something_ has certainly been added: a pendant rests on top of her stomach, glistening wetly in the daylight. “I pulled it out,” the maybe-M.E. says. “Dante wanted to see it.”

“Dante?” The woman tilts her head, and Lir turns to see a man speaking quietly but furiously to two uniforms. “Uh-huh.”

“You must be the new detective. My name’s Trish.” Lir looks blankly at the hand she holds out before taking it, and Trish’s handshake is firm and cordial. “I’m the medical examiner, coroner, whatever you’d like to call me. Your stiffs go onto my slab, anyway.”

Her dry humor draws an unwilling smile from Lir. “Okay. Trish. I’m Lir, Detective Thorne, take your pick as long as it’s not Lily. What can you tell me about our Jane Doe?”

“Not much, other than the obvious.” Trish points to the wound. “This was more than likely done pre-mortem, going by the amount of blood—there wouldn’t be so much of it if she was already dead—and there are a couple of hesitation marks at her throat. But as to which of those killed her, and how long ago, why she didn’t fight back, I won’t know all of that until I take her out of here.”

Lir considers all of that. “Why do you think she didn’t resist?”

“No self-defense wounds on the hands or arms. At least, not that I can see.”

“Mm. Your guys get pictures?”

“Not yet.” Trish smiles wryly. “Chief wanted you to see it first. It’s why Dante’s giving those two a lashing, though he’s just shooting the messengers at this point.”

“Right.” Standing, Lir peels off her gloves and drops them into the bag Trish holds out to her. “Guess I should go save ‘em.”

“Good luck.”

Lir snorts as she turns. On first sight, she’s already unimpressed with the so-called Dante. He’s handsome, sure, model or film star handsome even, with his straight nose and strong jaw dusted with a five o’clock shadow, but he’s dressed like a detective from a noir novel: pinstripe trousers and a matching vest, a red tie, white shirt with the sleeves rolled up to expose his forearms, brown Oxfords polished to a dull shine. The only things that break the illusion that he’s stepped off the silver screen are the watch at his wrist, the gleaming handcuffs clipped to the back of his belt, the radio at his hip, and the Beretta in its holster next to the radio. She more than half expects him to pull out a flask from somewhere and take a swig mid-tirade, but the only time he pauses is to draw in a breath.

“—how the _hell_ he expects us to carry out an investigation when he’s waiting on some _country bumpkin—”_ _  
_ _  
_ “Howdy,” Lir drawls.

He whirls on her so fiercely that she instinctively rests her hand on the butt of her own gun, her pulse roaring into her ears. Dante seems to catch himself, straightening to his full height to scowl down to her, and she’s startled by the pale, frozen blue of his eyes. “You Detective Thorne?”

She shrugs. “Country bumpkin works, too.”

Dante doesn’t have the grace to look embarrassed that she overheard him. “I’m Detective Redgrave. Yes, like the city, no, I don’t give a shit. You done lookin’ at the body?”

“Sure.”

“You hear that, Trish?” Dante hollers. “Take her out.”

Behind her, she hears the telltale metallic clatter of a gurney being placed on the ground, followed by a bit of huffing, the rasp of a zipper, and more heavy breathing and the rustling of fabric. “Are you going to give me the details or am I going to guess?”

He barks a laugh. “Morrison sent you out here blind? Doesn’t surprise me. Sure, I’ll humor you.” With a grin that’s more mocking than genuine, he says, “Call came in at 7:45. Some poor schmuck takin’ out the trash found our body and had the decency to lose his breakfast outside of the crime scene before he called. No witnesses so far, no clothing, no I.D., just—”  
  
“What about the camera?” Lir points over her shoulder with her thumb.

“Can’t get to it until the owner shows up, which, according to his staff could be anytime between noon and midnight.”

“Alright. What do you need me to do?”

Dante considers her, that cruel smile still playing at his lips. “You want to help?” She nods. “Go keep those fuckers away.”

“The press?” His expression doesn’t slip, and she shakes her head. “That’s uniform work. Send them to—”

“Either deal with them or go home. I don’t have time to hold your hand.”

Just like that, he turns away in a clear dismissal. Lir stares at his broad back, her head throbbing from the night before and the rage that’s been building since she stepped into Morrison’s office: rage at the incompetence of her former chief, at the glares that had followed her once she entered the precinct, at Simmons’ earnest naivety, at whoever butchered a woman and left her in an alley like she was no better than the trash already there, at Dante himself. It’s familiar, and choking, the same burning that’s festered within her all her life with every snide, _“Are you sure you can handle that? Wouldn’t you rather answer phones and let the men handle the rest?”_

Instead of giving into her urge to punch him in his smug mouth, she inhales deeply and holds it until spots dance in her vision. Then she exhales and heads towards the bright yellow tape and, beyond it, the reporters and photographers craning their necks to get a look at the violence that’s visited their city. Two steps, and cold fingers curl around her wrist, sending numbness crawling along her skin from where they touch. Lir closes her eyes, counting to ten, and then she pulls free. Only on the other side of the tape does she look back, and the sight of a woman in a red dress with pale hair staring back at her sadly, her lips moving soundlessly, is exactly what she expected. _Definitely getting a drink,_ she muses.

The reporters are no different from the ones Lir dealt with in Fortuna, just more persistent. She repeats the phrase, “No comment,” so many times that it begins to lose meaning to her, until a uniform comes to relieve her and she’s able to hail a taxi. But she doesn’t go back to work straight away. The cabbie drops her at a liquor store, waiting at the curb while she hurries in to buy a mini bottle of vodka and hurries back out, and she cracks it open and takes it like a shot, stowing the empty bottle in her pocket as they reach the precinct. Lir tips him double, then heads inside, and the bustling and noise is so at odds with the sullen silence of only hours ago that she nearly stops in her tracks. It’s only force of will that keeps her moving to the stairs in the back and up them, to where her desk sits just outside of Morrison’s office.

Dante is seated at the desk across from hers, a phone clamped between his face and shoulder while he writes on a notepad. Lir waits until he hangs up to say, “You’re an ass.”

“Been called worse,” he replies distractedly. “Trish’s report get in yet?”

“Not in my inbox. You got a problem with me?”

“No offense, sweetheart, but city crime is different from country crime.”

“I’m from Fortuna. Not the mountains.”

“Uh-huh. I’m sure you dealt with a lot of purse snatching.”

Lir bristles. “Listen, jackass—”

“Go see Trish. See if she’s got a report yet or not.”

Her mouth hangs open. Then she stands, slamming her chair back into her desk loudly enough that Morrison looks out from his office with a frown, and stalks back the way she’d come, heading for the elevators. On one hand, she understands Dante’s shit attitude; she’s new to Red Grave, new to their force. On the other, she transferred _from_ Homicide _to_ Homicide, and there were enough of them in Fortuna that the sight of another isn’t going to send her running, and he’s a sour bastard with a chip on his shoulder who probably thinks he can do nothing wrong and his word is law. Which she’s only proving, she realizes, running his errands for him, and she jabs irritably at the button that will take her to the basement and the morgue. Next time he demands she do something, she’s going to tell him right where he can shove it. In the back of her mind, however, disappointment is bitter. _So much,_ she thinks, _for a fresh start._


	2. Defensive Wounds

_“Agonies are one of my changes of garments,_ _  
_ _I do not ask the wounded person how he feels, I myself become_ _  
_ _the wounded person,_   
_My hurts turn livid upon me as I lean on a cane and observe.”_   
— Walt Whitman

»»————- ⚜ ————-««

The morgue is cool and quiet, gleaming metal polished to a shine that sends little daggers of light into Lir’s eyes. She gives herself a moment to adjust, listening to the faint _tic tic tic_ of the freezers, fingering the bottle of aspirin in her pocket while she waits to see if the subtle pressure in her skull is going to shift from discomfort to agony. Next to the door is a desk, with a state of the art computer, a few files, a cup full of pens, and a half-drunk cup of coffee with lipstick on the rim; beyond that, there is another door, one that probably leads to a storage room, two walls of cold lockers in four rows of four, and two x-ray displays on the final wall. In the center of the room are three slabs. On one of them is the Jane Doe, covered respectfully with a sheet, her eyes closed to give her an expression of peace. At her side is Trish, her blonde hair pulled into a knot at the top of her head and her face partially obscured by a sterile mask that she tugs down on Lir’s approach.

“Thorne,” she greets cheerfully. “You here for the autopsy report?” Lir nods, and Trish beckons her closer. “You’re right on time. Just got done with our guest.”

Lir isn’t sure what to make of having a corpse called a guest. Gallows humor, she supposes. “What can you tell me about her?”

“She suffered, that’s for certain.” Trish turns on the light over the slab and pulls it down, illuminating the Jane Doe with a grisly, fluorescent white that turns her already dead pallor a sickly blue-gray. Then she pulls the sheet down, and Lir is suddenly, incredibly grateful that she hasn’t eaten yet, the bile in her throat bitter but weak. “The throat and abdominal trauma was all perimortem. She was alive, but not struggling, when our killer cut her open. Judging from the tissue damage, looks like the throat happened first, but it was ultimately shock and blood loss that killed her.”

“She was alive for the whole thing?”

“Mm-hm. Though I don’t know how _aware_ of it she was. I don’t have the toxicology report yet—that will take a little longer to run, sorry—but pupil dilation is indicative of intoxication. Judging from the depth of the gash here,” Trish points to Jane Doe’s throat, “it was more to keep her quiet than kill her. She would have bled out from that alone eventually if no one found her first, but it doesn’t go through bone. The hesitation marks at the edges make me think he was more . . . Well, there’s no easy way to say this. Probably sawed through her.”

Lir tries to picture it, being too strung out or drunk to defend herself, being helpless while some maniac slashed her throat and cut her open like a butcher. From the corner of her eye, she catches sight of a red dress and pale hair and holds her breath, counting to ten until it fades, then asks, “You said at the scene there weren’t any defensive wounds.”

“That’s right. And there aren’t. No blood or tissue under her nails, no bruising or scrapes or cuts to show that she tried to fight back.” Trish sighs, lifting the sheet back over Jane Doe before tugging off her gloves. “Whoever this is, they’re one sick puppy.”

“Yeah.” Photographs on the wall catch her attention, and Lir walks over to study them closely. They’re all from the crime scene, some of little bits of evidence next to their markers, others of the victim, and it’s the latter she really looks at. “Does that pendant have any religious connotations?”

“You’d have to check. Why?”

“I just thought she looks kind of like an angel.”

Trish comes to stand next to her, her expression grave. “You know, I had the same idea.”

They stand in a heavy silence, the clock on the wall ticking loudly until Lir sighs. She bids farewell to Trish, who promises to have the full report to her by the end of the day, and takes the elevator back up to the bullpen. Dante will no doubt want to know what she’s learned, but she finds that she doesn’t quite want to tell him. Something about this all is nagging her, tugging the thin strands of her memory with an urgency, _look, look, you’ve seen this before,_ even though she’s fairly certain that she never has. Was there a similar case in Fortuna? So lost in wracking her thoughts she nearly runs right into Simmons as she steps off the elevator, and she mumbles an apology and returns to her desk, where she boots up the computer, hunting for a notepad and a pen while she waits for it to finish loading.

A cup of coffee thudding next to her elbow has her peering up. Dante sits back down, a cup of his own in his hand that he raises to her before he takes a sip. His face screws up in disgust. “Fuck. No matter how long I’m here, coffee still tastes like shit. What’d Trish say?”

“That we’d have the full report soon,” Lir replies. She finds what she was looking for and logs into the terminal. “Victim was slaughtered like livestock and left to die. Too something to even try to save her own life.”

“That all?” 

She’s aware of his gaze, critical and assessing on her, and it makes her skin flush unpleasantly. “Until toxicology comes back.”

With a nod, he leans back in his seat. “Alright. What are your thoughts?”

 _Now you want to know?_ she nearly asks. Rubbing her temples, she replies instead, “Our guy is bold. A nightclub on one side, a bar on the other, people coming and going at all hours? Not to mention, he had to have been familiar with the location to avoid the security camera, if he did. Speaking of, is that footage here yet?” Dante shakes his head. “Right. Okay. So, Jane Doe was probably at one of the two places. Why risk dragging her any farther than that? And he had to get her to go with him somehow. A knife or a gun would have been too obvious, even for a crowded bar.”

“Could’ve posed as a hook-up,” Dante suggests.

“Mm. If she wasn’t drunk, he might have drugged her.”

“Drugs?”

“Her pupils were blown.”

“So,” he says slowly, “we’ve got a bold, possibly attractive killer who goes to bars to pick up women. Think he knew the vic?”

Lir realizes suddenly that he’s testing her, digging to see her worth, and it makes her angry all over again. “No, too risky. He’s got balls, but he’s not an idiot. All this planning, all the care he took, he wouldn’t want to leave any trace of himself, and that means he was probably a stranger and he picked her out when he got there. If it hadn’t been her, it would have been someone else.”

“Opportunistic. Well, shit. Means he’s gonna be a bitch to find.” He offers her a crooked grin that doesn’t reach his eyes. “Want to flip a coin to see who’s givin’ Morrison the news?”

“You do it. I need to look for something.”

Dante frowns then, but the expression is quickly smothered as he stands. He takes his coffee with him into Morrison’s office; once the door is closed firmly behind him, Lir releases a sigh and slumps in her chair, cradling her head in her hands. This was meant to be a new beginning for her. Get out of Fortuna, away from the good-intentioned but condescending men she worked with, leave the bitter break-up and the cramped apartment behind her to set out in the bigger city. Yet here she is, dealing with condescending men, living in an apartment that’s large enough to feel empty, with a killer that she knows she has an infinitesimally small chance of catching on her hands. _Maybe I’ll get a cat,_ she thinks, and then discards it. She’s going to be too busy to give any pet the love it would deserve.

Lir pulls up the database and enters her credentials, watching the wheel spin as the program decides whether or not she’s allowed in. Once it opens, she navigates to the search bar, where she types _evisceration,_ hoping the term will be narrow enough to ping any cases that might have been similar. All she gets are animal cruelty cases, youths torturing cats and dogs, and she groans. Next is _religious,_ but that doesn’t get her anything other than some fraud. _Jane Doe_ is too broad, while trying by location only gets her arrests for petty theft, assault, and drunk and disorderlies. Her fingers drum on her desk as she thinks; maybe, if whatever it is that she thinks she remembers was _before_ her time in the force, it would have been before they started digitizing their records. 

Which would mean figuring out the location and then digging through that city’s physical files.

She pinches the bridge of her nose. Most of what she said to Dante was speculation, and she knows that they’re going to spend at least a week trying to identify their victim and looking for anyone who might have seen her, tracking down friends and acquaintances and ex-boyfriends to see if any of them had the fury and the cruelty needed to butcher someone like that. If they’re lucky, she’ll have gotten into some sort of trouble with the law and there will be prints they can match. If they’re unlucky, it’s beating the streets, shoving her photograph in people’s faces to try and jar their memory.

“Detective?” Lir opens her eyes to find Simmons standing next to her, a USB stick in his hand. “The nightclub owner sent this over. Said it’s all the footage from the last twenty-four hours and you wanted it?”

He sounds uncertain, and she forces herself to smile. “Yeah, thanks. While I’ve got you here, can I ask a favor?” Hesitantly, he nods. “Head down to the morgue to get the victim’s prints from Trish and run ‘em, will you? It’s a long shot, but it might help us figure out who she is.”

Simmons doesn’t look like he finds the idea appealing, but he gives a weak salute and heads down the stairs. Lir watches him until he disappears into the elevator, and then she plugs the USB into her computer and opens the files to scroll through it. Twenty-four hours of hopefully unaltered footage stored in four hour chunks which, when she clicks on the first video to play it, turn out to be monochrome and grainy. She fights through the urge to yank her hair, instead getting up and going to grab a fresh cup of coffee from the canteen. After a moment of hesitation, she takes the entire pot, setting a second one to brew; this is going to be an all-nighter for sure, and the only thing that’s going to get her through it is enough caffeine to make her jittery.

Dante is back at his desk when she returns. He arches a brow at the sight of her with the pot, but that turns into a loud groan as she says, “Footage got here. All twenty-four hours worth. Want to grab a seat?”

“There’s a meeting room we can use,” he mutters. “Bigger screen. Grab it and let’s go. Is that all the coffee?”

“For now.”

His long-suffering sigh draws an unwilling smile from her. Dante leads her down a hallway to a room mostly taken up by a large oval table surrounded by plush leather chairs, and he sinks into one as she sets up the monitor on the wall and gets the USB situated. “Ready?”

“Not really.”

“Tough shit.” She chuckles and presses play.

Hours pass as they work through both the footage and the coffee, pausing only when they catch sight of a pale-haired woman before slumping back in disappointment and carrying on. Morrison stops by once to check on them, then Simmons with the news that the prints were a dead end, and finally Trish with her full report, toxicology included. None of them linger for more than a few minutes at most. Dante and Lir alternate bathroom breaks and coffee runs, neither of them willing to stop the tape until it’s done. _Like ripping a bandaid off,_ she thinks at one point, stifling a yawn before taking a large swig of her lukewarm coffee. _Get it over with in one go, no hesitation._

It’s just passed four in the morning when Dante lurches in his seat. “Pause it, pause it!” Lir jumps, pressing quickly on the remote, and he squints. “Rewind it a bit. There, stop, stop. Press play.”

“What is—oh!” She scrambles for the file on the table, flipping it open so she can see the picture of Jane Doe clipped to the inside. Pulling it free, she holds it up, glancing between it and the screen. “It’s her.”

“Mm. Looks like . . .” He leans forward, his eyes narrowed as his lips move silently. “Two?”

Lir blinks, then turns her laugh into a rough cough. “No. It’s, uh . . . It’s 3:37.”

Dante scowls at her as he reaches into the pocket of his vest to pull out a pair of square glasses, the style just as noir as his clothing. He perches them on his nose, then nods. “Yeah. Alright. So our victim walked into the club at 3:37 am. Since her body was found at quarter to eight, means there’s a five hour window for our killer to have found her and pulled her into the alley.”

“That’s if you don’t remove however long she was in the bar and the killer leaving,” Lir points out.

He clicks his tongue. “Don’t be a wiseass, Thorne. It’s not cute.”

“I’m not here to be cute,” she replies irritably. 

“Shame.” Just as she’s debating dumping her coffee on him, he asks, “There a way to print this? We’ll take it with her autopsy photo and show it to the staff at the club, see if any of ‘em remember her. Maybe she paid with a credit card, which’d give us a name.”

“You plannin’ to sleep tonight?” she asks dryly.

“Sleep when you’re dead, Thorne. Print and let’s go.”

Biting her tongue, she heads back to the computer attached to the monitor and screenshots the frozen video. Once it’s in her hands, the two of them head out back, where the employee lot is, and Dante leads her to a car that she recognizes from her childhood. Her mouth drops open as she takes in the ‘58 Corvette, the same type her father had often talked dreamily of owning when he retired, the black paint and white cut-outs glossy in the early dawn light. The top is closed against the dew, but she can still make the red leather interior, and she laughs incredulously when Dante unlocks it. “Seriously?”

“You can take a cab if you like,” he replies tightly.

Lir closes her mouth and climbs in, looking around curiously. The seats are incredibly comfortable, and it doesn’t seem like Dante has done any upgrading to it at all: the gearshift is still topped by a clean white knob, and the only source of sound is the radio, the knob of which Dante turns until classical rock filters softly through the speakers. _A good car is like a good woman,_ her father had told her two months before his death, holding her in his lap as he pointed to the yellowed magazine, _treat her right and she’ll stick with you for life._ She’d put the damned ad in his casket before they buried him, and Lir closes her eyes against both the unwelcome sting of tears and the sight of him with his misshapen head on the silk pillow. _Botched robbery,_ her mother said tearfully. Throat closed with sudden grief, just as sharp as it had been then, Lir hardly notices when they pull away from the curb.

“She’s beautiful,” she whispers.

Dante’s startled silence is the only reply she gets.


	3. Bearers Of

_ “It is much, much worse to receive bad news through the written word than by somebody simply telling you, and I’m sure you understand why. When somebody simply tells you bad news, you hear it once, and that’s the end of it. But when bad news is written down, whether in a letter or a newspaper or on your arm in felt tip pen, each time you read it, you feel as if you are receiving the bad news again and again.”  _ _   
_ — Lemony Snicket

»»————- ⚜ ————-««

“Sure, I know her.” The waitress pops her gum, handing the grainy photograph back to Lir. “Comes in every Friday like clockwork, doesn’t tip, takes a new man home with her when she goes. She in some sort of trouble?”

Dante smiles charmingly. “You could say that. She wouldn’t have happened to pay by card, would she?”

“You’ll have to ask Joan. The bartender? She handles the tabs.” After a moment, the waitress bats her lashes, reaching out to place a hand on Dante’s arm, and Lir resists the desire to throttle one or both of them. “I can keep you company while your partner talks to her.”

“Who am I to say no to a pretty lady?”

He cuts his eyes to Lir. With a snort, she turns sharply on her heel, trying to keep her irritation from showing on her face, adding  _ lady’s man  _ to the list of ways she’d describe him. It’s far from the worst, but the bright giggles that follow her to the bar have her wondering if  _ pig  _ would be better. A woman emerges from the back as she claims a stool, pretty with her dark eyes and darker hair, and if she weren’t on duty, Lir might have considered leaving her number. Which probably only makes her  _ slightly  _ better than Dante, a fact that has her reaching into her pocket for her badge to buy herself a bit of time to settle.

“What can I get ya, sugar?” the woman asks.

“Are you Joan?” With a raised brow, the woman nods, and Lir holds out her badge. “I’m Detective Thorne with the Red Grave Police Department. I was hoping you’d be able to answer some questions for me?”

Joan studies her badge. “Detective, huh? Sounds like your questions are gonna be heavy enough to warrant a drink. What’s your poison?”

Against her better judgement, Lir replies, “Vodka sour, with Chopin if you’ve got it.”

With a smile that seems a little more than flirtatious, Joan gets to work. Lir watches her deft, slender hands scoop ice into a strainer before adding the vodka and sour mix and shaking, and that coy expression is still on Joan’s face when she sets it in front of her. “On the house for the city’s finest.”

“Thank you.” Lir takes a long drink, closing her eyes as her tongue comes alive under the bittersweet flavor. Then she slides the photograph of Jane Doe across the bar. “Your friend said that you might know her?”

Joan studies it, bracing her arms on the bar and giving Lir a very good glimpse of her cleavage. “Mm-hm. That’s Sophie. Pays with her Amex, likes a frozen margarita with sugar instead of salt on the rim. She the body they pulled from the alley yesterday?” Lir shrugs, and she sighs. “Shame. She was a sweetheart.”

“I heard the opposite.”

“I’m sure you did. She tips for the service she gets, and Lacey’s usually too busy flirting to pay attention to her tables. Never did me wrong, though, and most of the girls here will tell you the same.”

“I have to say,” Lir watches her sharply, “you seem awfully calm for someone who just found out there was a murder next door.”

Joan looks back at her steadily for a long time, not saying anything. When she finally does speak, her voice is quiet, “Don’t get me wrong, Detective. I’m pissed as hell about what happened to her. I read the papers, y’know? So I know that she was . . . If I could find the bastard, I’d wring his neck myself. But I’ve got to trust you to do it, and me crying won’t get you any answers. I’ll do it after you’ve left.”

“Alright. I’m sorry.”

Just like that, the tension is gone, the warm smile sliding back onto Joan’s pretty face. “No hard feelings. You can make it up to me later, if you want.”

“Maybe. Anything else you can tell me?”

The way she catches her plump lower lip between her teeth has Lir vividly imagining what it would be like to do that herself, and she breathes deeply to push the thought away. “Nothing unusual happened last night, not that I noticed. Sophie came in, sat at her table, ordered her drink. She was with some friends, but they split up to dance for a while, and I didn’t see her again until she paid her tab. We get pretty busy on Fridays,” she adds apologetically. “It’s easy to lose track of people.”

Lir takes another sip of her drink. “Did she leave with anyone?”

“If she did, I didn’t get a look at him. But it wouldn’t surprise me. Nothing against her, people can do what they want, but she knew the effect she had on others.” Lir thinks of the face on the slab, beauty made sorrowful by death. “Give me a moment, and I’ll get her last name for you.”

“That would be great, thanks.” As Joan moves to the register on the back counter, Dante slides onto the stool next to her, and Lir eyes him irritably. “Get anything from your witness?”

“Nah, she was too busy cryin’ to talk,” he replies. “Drinkin’ on the job?”

Before she can reply, Joan is back, and she hands a folded piece of paper to Lir. To her pleasure and amusement, not once does she look at Dante. “Here you go. Let me know if there’s anything else I can do for you, Detective.”

Downing the rest of her drink, Lir gives a little salute and heads out of the club, Dante at her side. She ignores him for the moment to unfold the note, a small grin breaking tugging at her lips as she reads over it; there’s a name on the top half, which she tears off to give to him, but on the bottom is a phone number and  _ Call Me  _ written in an elegant, looping script. “Sophie Marons,” Dante recites. “Wonder if there’s a connection to Simon Marons.”

“The lawyer?” Dante exhales slowly, and she curses. “Shit. Draw straws to see who makes the call?”

“Nope,” he drawls. “Your lead, your visit. Let’s go.”

Lir frowns at him, an expression that’s becoming more and more common the longer she works with her frustrating new partner. Her mother used to warn her that her face would get stuck eventually, and she’s starting to wonder if that’s true; at least he’s not sending her off alone, which she wouldn’t really blame him for but would still be angry over. And he turns the volume on the radio down once they're in the car when he notices her pulling out her bottle of aspirin and popping one into her mouth. It looks like he wants to say something and thinks the better of it. Good. The less she has to talk to him, the better. The drive to Marson & Co. passes with only the harsh strumming of rock and the quiet purring of the engine, and their silence persists into the lobby, where Lir speaks briefly to a receptionist, and in the elevator ride up to the seventh floor.

Dante whistles when they step off into an office that sprawls over the entire floor. Glass windows that stretch from floor to ceiling on three of the walls give a stunning view of the city, allowing plenty of sunlight in, and it glows over the interior decorations: a large oak desk, numerous shelves full of books, a sitting area, a bar set next to the elevator. It’s the office of a man who wound up rich and, as the figure behind the desk stands, Lir takes a look at him and decides it was probably inherited. Simon Marsons is as immaculate as the space he occupies, his suit pressed and his salted hair pressed back from a hairline that’s only starting to thin, a lavender handkerchief folded into his coat pocket and diamond cufflinks glittering at his wrists. Lir walks towards him, her boots thudding dully on the polished tile floor; up close, she can see the vibrant green of his eyes and that his teeth, when he smiles, are too even and straight to be anything but bought.

“My apologies, but I’m afraid I’m not open for visitors today,” he says, his voice pleasant yet oily somehow. “If you leave your name with Mary, I’ll try to—”

“Simon Marsons?” Lir cuts him off curtly. “I’m Detective Thorne. This is my partner, Detective Redgrave. Are you related to Sophie Marsons?”

His tanned face goes ashy. “Sophie? She’s my daughter. Has something happened to her?”

“You might want to sit,” Dante advises him, not unkindly.

Marson’s legs go out from under him, and Lir watches with embers of sympathy as he collapses into his grand chair. “Please,” he says, his voice shaking. “Where is she? Was she hurt? I knew I should have called when she didn’t show up for work yesterday, but I assumed she was sleeping off a hangover . . . Which hospital do I need to go to?”

Lir takes a deep breath. “Is your office always open on Sunday?”

“What? Yes, yes, I have a number of clients, and Saturday and Sunday are when I go over all of my notes. Please, Detective, Sophie . . .”

That ember sparks to a dull blaze. Speaking quietly, Lir says, “I’m sorry. We found her yesterday morning.”

A low keening erupts from Marson’s throat. It’s not unlike the cry of a wounded animal, caught in a trap from which it cannot escape and too weak to continue struggling, and Lir thinks of the fox her father had snared one year after it killed their chickens and her mouth fills with the heavy taste of iron. Dante steps around her, his own face displaying a hint of discomfort. It’s oddly reassuring to realize that he probably hates these visits as much as she does, the transformation from detective to confidante and terrible messenger that is a cruel necessity of their job. “When was the last time you saw your daughter, Mr. Marson?”

The man mumbles something incoherent, and the two of them share a look. “Sir?” Lir presses.

“I don’t know,” he whispers, his voice choked. “You’ll have to . . . Mary will know. I’m sorry. Excuse me, I can’t . . .”

Lir exhales slowly. “Okay. Thank you. I’m going to leave my card. Please call us if you think of anything.”

He buries his face in his hands, and she slides her card onto the desk before heading back to the elevator. Once inside, she leans against the wall, and even Dante looks tired, the hollows under his eyes dark and deep. “Never gets easier, does it?” he mutters.

She shakes her head. Outside, she turns to him, her mouth dry and her limbs heavy. “I’m goin’ home. I need sleep. You?”

“Can’t argue that. Want a ride?”

The idea of him knowing where she lives makes her skin prickle uncomfortably, which is strange, given that they work together. Still, she points to the road. “I’ll catch a cab. See you in a bit.”

“Mm-hm.”

Lir leaves him there, feeling his eyes boring into her back as she hails a taxi and slides inside, nearly slurring with exhaustion as she gives the driver her address. She dozes on the ride, woken by the cabbie tapping the glass partition between them, and she fumbles to pay and tip before heading into her building. It’s quiet inside, warm in a stuffy sort of way, which makes her more drowsy. Another short trip in an elevator, and she’s at her door, which she unlocks with trembling fingers and kicks shut. Too tired to bother showering, Lir strips as she walks to her bedroom in the back, where she manages to pull the curtains closed and set an alarm on her phone before collapsing into bed. Behind her closed eyes, visions of Sophie Marson’s body linger, chasing her into her dreams.

In them, she is once again in the morgue. The lights overhead flicker as she stares at the slab in the middle, upon which rests a form covered by a white sheet, and her breath frosts in the air around her and chills her lips. As she stands frozen, the thing under the sheet moves, pallid fingers poking from beneath to curl over its edge and push it slowly down, and a low whine locks in her throat, the remnants of a scream she cannot voice. Creeping, unhurried, the corpse of Sophie Marson sits up, her pale hair spilling limply over her shoulders; when milky eyes focus on her, Lir twitches. But she’s paralyzed, her legs unresponsive no matter how desperately she pleads with them to work.

A low rasp falls from the corpse’s mouth, which forms soundless words. With every attempt it makes to speak, air whistles from it, barely audible over the thrum of the air conditioning, until, at last, it stands on trembling legs, bracing itself on the slabs as it clambers towards her. As it draws closer, the whispers take form:  _ “You saw . . . you saw . . . you saw . . .” _

_ No,  _ Lir tries to shout,  _ no, no, I didn’t see a damn thing. There was nothing to see! Just you, dead on the ground, and if something else was there I had to ignore it because things like that don’t exist! _

Grasping fingers reach for her. The murmurs take on a fevered rhythm, rising in pitch and volume until they devolve into a shrill ringing, those dead eyes bulging as its hands land on her face—

Lir snaps up with a strangled scream, reaching to grab and shove and fight. Yet there’s nothing there; just her room with unpacked boxes cluttered around, and she hunches over and presses her palms to her cheeks, fighting to get her panicked breathing under control. The ringing cuts off, then starts again. Cursing, she fumbles for her phone, finding it buried under the covers, and jabs to answer it, fear making her bark into it. “What?”

Dante’s voice comes through the receiver. “Sorry to wake you, sleepin’ beauty, but Marson’s at the station to make a statement and Morrison is liable to rip you a new one if you aren’t there soon.”

“Fine, just . . . Wait, there?”

“Yeah. I’m outside.” Startled, she darts to the window and peers out, seeing Dante parked on the street below, leaning on his car, looking back up at her. He waves as he says, “Better get your ass in gear, Thorne.”

Furious with him, she hangs up and stalks to her bathroom to brush her teeth and wash her face. Then she grabs a fresh change of clothes, tugging them on as she follows the trail of dirty ones she’d left earlier to her boots, which she slams her feet into. Keys, wallet, badge, gun, Lir grabs all of them from the table next to the door, then she leaves, choosing the quicker option of the stairs at the end of the building hall. Dante straightens as she emerges, his lips twitching like he’s trying not to laugh, and she glares at him as she yanks open the door and slides into his car, vindicated by his, “Hey!” when she slams it fiercely. It’s his turn to scowl, climbing behind the wheel, and he cranks the volume up to near painful levels before putting the car in drive and pulling away from the curb. 

Tired of his dickish behavior, she turns the knob back down and snaps, “How the fuck did you find my apartment?”

He scoffs. “We’ve got personnel files.”

“For emergencies!” Lir shouts. “You don’t just go into them whenever you feel like it!”

“If you’d just told me—”

“I don’t have to tell you  _ shit,”  _ she seethes.

Dante slams on the brakes, yanking the car into a parking spot and turning to glower at her. “You’ve had a fuckin’ chip on your shoulder since we met. Like it or not, we’re partners, and that means I need to know where the hell you live in case somethin’ comes up, like it did tonight.”

“I could have gotten there on my own!”

“Yeah, sure, and Morrison would’ve reamed your ass out for takin’ so long. Shit, I had to call you  _ four times  _ before you answered your goddamn phone. You think he’d have stood for that?” Lir merely shakes her head, and he throws his hands up in frustration. “What the hell is your problem? Jesus fuckin’ wept, you’d think I’m the biggest prick you’ve ever met—”

“Because you are,” she says curtly. “You’ve been ridin’ me since yesterday, havin’ me run your errands—”

“Oh, so you’re above goin’ to the morgue—”

“—acting like I don’t know my head from my ass—”

“—or dealin’ with reporters—”

“What is with you?” she cries, exasperated. “I get it, you idolize Sam Spade, but do you need his fucking sexism along with the outfit?”

Dante closes his mouth, staring at her intently for a moment, and she realizes that, in their arguing, they had each leaned in, as if to intimidate the other. Then he grins, slowly, and this one reaches his eyes, melting the glaciers there. “You like Humphrey Boggart?”

Thrown by the question, Lir can only blink at him. “Uh . . . I guess? I watched his films a lot as a kid, so . . . What does that have to do with anything?”

“Got a favorite?”

“What?” He’s still watching her. With a groan, Lir slumps back into her seat. “I dunno.  _ Marked Woman,  _ probably.”

Dante nods solemnly. “Bette Davis was a babe.” He continues speaking as he eases them back into traffic. “Look, Thorne—”

She huffs. “Can you just call me Lir like a normal person, for the love of God?”

“Lir,” he amends without batting an eye. “Me ridin’ you? Sorry to break it to you, but Red Grave is a beast of its own. Maybe you were good in Fortuna. Hell, your record says you were. Here? You’ll get eaten alive if you aren’t careful.”

“What a load of shit,” she mumbles.

Dante sighs. “You know somethin’ else? It’s been buggin’ me since yesterday, and the only reason I haven’t suggested Morrison take you off the case is because I’m worried you’d get yourself killed if I couldn’t keep an eye on you. You’re too eager to prove yourself.” Lir bristles, but his next statement, spoken flatly with no hint of emotion at all, has a faint prickle of fear creeping up her spine. “You look an awful lot like our victim. If this guy’s gonna go serial . . . Well, you’d fit his profile nicely.”


	4. Frustration

_ “Death and life are the same thing- _ _   
_ _ like the two sides of my hand, the palm and the back. _ _   
_ _ And still the palm and back are not the same . . . _ _   
_ _ They can neither be separated, nor mixed.” _ __   
—Ursula K. Le Guin

»»————- ⚜ ————-««

Lir takes Simon Marson’s statement with a grain of salt. It’s not that she doesn’t trust him—she doesn’t trust lawyers as a whole, but nothing so far has given her a reason to believe he’d outright lie—just that she’s learned firsthand how memories get clouded and fuzzy, particularly about routines. Sure, their victim worked for him. And, yes, she probably did the exact same thing every day, going to her paid internship at her father’s office Monday through Saturday, taking Sunday off, and spending Friday night bar-hopping with her friends. Yet there’s simply too much Marson was unaware of. The questions of who her friends are, what she did when she  _ wasn’t  _ working, her hobbies, any potential lovers, hell even where she lived, are all ones he provided no answer to or understanding of. To him, Sophie truly existed only in the hours between 8:00 am and 6:30 pm. Which isn’t exactly unusual, but it makes her job of following those leads harder, and she ends their interview feeling more irritated than she had when she started.

Dante, too, must be frustrated, because he says nothing at all to her when he leaves the observation room to join her at their desks, merely clacking angrily on his keyboard as he types his report. Lir does the same, transcribing the interview with Marson and her notes to send to Morrison later. A stiff drink is what she needs, maybe a call to Joan for a bit of relaxation, but she settles for chewing aspirin and drinking the bitter coffee unique to precincts. By the time she’s done recounting the events of the last thirty-six hours, her fingers are stiff and the throbbing in her temples has turned into a fierce clawing that makes her eyes water, and she’s keenly aware of the fact that they’re fast closing in on the forty-eight hour mark and how much more difficult this investigation is going to be beyond it.

“You eaten?” Dante asks. Lir shakes her head, and he picks up his phone, dialing quickly. “Me neither. ‘Bout to keel over, if I’m honest. You good with pizza?”

“Sure. Whatever toppings are fine.”

He flashes her a grin before speaking into the receiver, and Lir uses the time to read back over Trish’s findings. They aren’t pretty. While there were no ligature marks, showing that Sophie was neither restrained nor strangled, there were heavy levels of Rohypnol in her blood, meaning she would have been unable to do anything at all. In fact, Trish notes that the dose probably would have been fatal, given the fact that Sophie was well over the legal limit for intoxication, clocking a BA of 0.16%, putting her at the threshold for alcohol poisoning. Did she normally drink so much? Lir runs her fingers over the paper, frowning slightly as she thinks. Joan hadn’t said much more about Sophie’s habits other than her cocktail of choice, and they hadn’t asked for a receipt, a stupid oversight that needs to be corrected. Because if that much liquor was’t common for Sophie, it means either she was drinking a lot more, which could lead them to recent stresses.

Or that the killer was feeding her margaritas all night to make sure she was too weak to fight him.

“There was no phone recovered from the alley, right?” she asks. Dante gives a grunt as he hangs up the phone, and she leans back, stretching to relieve the tension in her shoulders. “We’ve got to find her friends, talk to them.”

“What about the mother?”

“Gone. Parents divorced when Sophie was . . .” Lir checks her notes. “Six. The original custody agreement was for the mom to have supervised visitation, but she went no contact when Sophie was twelve. The last Marson heard from her, she was living with her new husband in Portland.”

Dante whistles. “No contact? Think Marson was abusing her?”

“Maybe. But why would Sophie hang around, if that was the case? You watch your dad beat on your mom for six years and wind up working for him?”

He grunts and leans back, crossing his arms over his chest and staring thoughtfully at a spot just over her right shoulder. “Abuse doesn’t always make it to the kids,” he says after a moment. “Sure, maybe pops was an asshole, but he was probably smart enough to keep it behind closed doors. Or maybe there wasn’t anything goin’ on other than two people who didn’t want to be together anymore.” He pauses to take a sip of coffee. “Could have been mom, too.”

“Right.” Lir massages her temples, and the pressure there subsides enough that she no longer feels like her eyes are going to burst. A migraine is the last thing she needs right now, but that’s exactly where she’s headed if she doesn’t get some sort of rest soon. “So, we have a victim whose father knows nothing about her personal life, a killer who was smart enough to make sure we couldn’t trace her beyond the bar, and, after nearly forty hours, no real answers.”

“Sounds about right.” Dante’s grin is bitter.

“Fuck.” She drums her fingers on her desk. “Crime scene still roped off?”

“As far as I know. You plannin’ a visit?”

“Yeah. I need to get some air, and I want to take it in now that it’s quiet.” Lir grabs her coat from the back of her chair as she stands, sliding it on before leaning to open her desk and grab her gun and badge. Fastening them to her belt, she mutters, “Maybe something got missed.”

Dante gets up, stretching with a loud yawn. “Alright. I’ll go with you.”

“I don’t need—”

“I’m not babysittin’ you, Lir.” His eyes are somehow both grave and mocking, and she’s not sure which irritates her more. “There’s a killer. None of us should be goin’ out alone, especially with the statistics about who else might show up there to get their jollies.”

That gives her pause. “Right. Okay. You driving?”

He dangles his keys. Lips twitching, she turns and heads down the stairs and out to the lot, listening to the quiet thumping of Dante’s shoes as he follows her. For someone so big, he doesn’t make a lot of noise when he moves, and she wonders idly if it’s a force of habit or just how he is as she slides into the passenger seat of his car and fastens her seatbelt. Like always, he flicks on the radio and finds a classic rock station before starting the drive, and he ignores her popping two aspirin into her mouth and chewing them dry. 

The ride back to the alley passes in the silence between them. Lir looks out of her window, the rain sliding along the glass turning the world outside to a muted painting of blurred shapes and bright flashes of color on an otherwise dreary background, and thinks. Sophie Marsons had gone to the bar, as was her usual weekend habit, and ordered her preferred drink. Had she gone with friends? Had they danced, and laughed, until a stranger stole into their group, with eyes only for Sophie, eyes full of murder that she might have mistaken for desire? Despite what she had said to Dante about their victim being chosen randomly, Lir has little doubt that she knew her killer. Statistics point to it, the inevitable need for the comfort brought by familiarity that a new killer needs to do his work.  _ Statistics,  _ the voice of her old academy instructor rasps in her mind,  _ are statistically incorrect. _

If Sophie wasn’t the first, then there’s another victim out there.

Cold, bitter rain lashes her as soon as she steps out of the car. Huffing, watching her breath condense and twist in the air, Lir pulls her hood up around her face and tucks her hands into her pockets, wishing she had a slicker even if the garish yellow color of it would make her stick out like a sore thumb. Dante joins her, grimacing as he sets a black trilby on his head, water dripping from the brim steadily. “Good thing we already got forensics,” he mutters.

“Mm.” Making a non-committal noise in her throat, she ducks under the crime scene tape and walks into the alley, where she stands and takes it in. Without pedestrian and vehicular traffic on the street, it’s unnervingly quiet; is this how it was at four in the morning? Nothing but silence as the dull oppressiveness of the city while Sophie was carved open like livestock? 

Lir is moving towards the dumpster when something rustles behind it. Pausing, she stares at it, her brow pinched and her hand moving slowly to her gun, waiting.  _ Cat,  _ she thinks,  _ or rat. Something digging for scraps now that humanity has gone away.  _ But the silhouette she can just make out on the other side is too large, and, as she watches, a tanned hand grips the edge before a rain-soaked head pokes cautiously around, the eyes that she sees wide enough that the whites are like spotlights. Behind her, she hears Dante hiss, the faint splash of water as he slowly comes up beside her. Looks like he was right. Someone else  _ had  _ shown up, and now all that’s left to do is figure out whether or not they’re the murderer.

“Police,” Dante barks. “Don’t move!”

The man jumps to his feet and takes off, and Lir lets out a string of curses as she darts after him. They always fucking run, guilty or innocent, because seeing a cop always makes them feel like they’ve done something wrong. Bearers of bad news, thugs with guns, she’s heard it all, and she wonders how this guy thinks of the police even as she chases him down the winding alleys of a city she’s already growing to hate. “Thorne!” Dante shouts, his voice dwindling as the distance between them grows. “Goddamnit,  _ Thorne!” _

Up ahead, the black coat swirls as the man rushes through the maze. Sometimes all she has is a glimpse of fabric as he turns a corner, others, on the straight, narrow stretches, she can make out more of him, and her mind catalogues these snapshots. Slender build. Dark jeans. Heavy boots. The glint of a ring. A pair of wild eyes peering over his shoulder. Despite knowing she should draw it, Lir leaves her gun holstered.  _ Don’t you ever,  _ her instructor had said gravely,  _ take that thing out unless you intend to shoot,  _ and she’s got no desire to fire a bullet that would at best embed itself harmlessly into a wall and at worst ricochet and cause more damage.

Her hood falls back, rain plastering her hair to face and neck. In her chest, her heart is a drum, and her blood roars in her ears, equaled only by the low whistle of her breathing as she tries to control it to fight off fatigue.  _ Keep moving,  _ she tells her legs,  _ don’t fucking stop until you know who he is. _

At her hip, her radio crackles, only to be ignored. Right now, it is only her and her prey, locked in the chase until one of them is forced to stop. Guilty people run, sure. So do frightened ones. Which is he? Killer or morbid onlooker, dangerous or afraid? 

Lir never gets the chance to find out. They burst into a side-street, the cars around them blaring horns of fear and anger at this sudden intrusion, and a hand clamps onto her shoulder and yanks her back as a truck passes through the space she’d been about to step into. By the time it and its trailer clear out, the man is gone, and a scream bubbles in her throat that she fights to swallow. She knows who grabbed her—the scent of Dante’s cologne, muted by the rain, wafts into her nose, accompanied by the spiced, salty blend of sweat and deodorant—and she allows him to lead her back to the sidewalk, where she doubles over with her hands on her thighs and struggles to slow her breathing from the harsh, jagged pants to something close to normal. At this angle, she can make out the way water has turned the leather of his shoes a dull brown.  _ Never gonna look nice again,  _ she thinks, and closes her eyes against the swell of nausea that comes from exertion on an empty stomach.

“What the fuck were you thinking?” Dante growls, his voice rasping and hoarse from chasing her. “You ever stop to think for a damned second that we’d need backup? Or that chasing that idiot could have gotten you killed?”

The scolding makes her angry all over again. “I’m sorry,” she snaps, straightening to glare at him. “Should I have let our only lead so far go?”

“If it meant surviving? Yeah, you should’ve. Or were you hoping to wind up like Marsons?” His eyes are cold with fury, his cheeks flushed with it. “I told you, I fucking  _ told  _ you—”

Lir’s phone rings, cutting off whatever tirade he’d been heading towards. Scowling, she answers it. “Thorne.”

“You with Redgrave?” Morrison asks, crackling with static. 

“Yeah.” Dante makes an impatient motion with his hand, and she holds up a finger in the standard request for a minute of silence.

“Get your asses over to Tellula Park. He’ll know where it is.”

There’s something so foreboding about Morrison’s tone that Lir knows the answer to her question before she even asks it. “What’s there?”

Morrison sighs. “Another body. Looks like our killer didn’t want to wait for us to catch him.”

“We’ll be there.” She hangs up, then looks at Dante, frustration and defeat welling within her to make her voice curiously flat. “There’s another victim in Tellula Park.”

Dante curses. “Our guy?”

“Morrison said it was,” she replies.

He glances around, studying the street sign at the intersection. “C’mon. Car’s about two blocks away. We’ll have to book it if we don’t want Morrison to rip us new assholes for taking our sweet time.”

Lir nods. Dante turns and starts down the sidewalk, and she follows, craving a drink and a good night’s rest and maybe a bit of company, angry to have wasted time on some idiot onlooker when the killer was busy leaving them another corpse, another family to notify, another twisted web.  _ I didn’t know,  _ she thinks, and that just makes her feel worse. Tunnel vision, that’s what she had fallen into, too focused on what was in front of her nose to take a second to really contemplate if a killer who took such care not to be noticed would have been so stupid as to come back to the scene of his crime in the middle of the day with cops still around. 

They’re sweating and miserably damp by the time they reach the car. Dante pulls towels from the backseat for them to sit on—something her father had done, to keep water from damaging the seats—and turns on the heater to fight some of the chill. It’s only once they’re on their way to the new scene that he says anything at all. “It wasn’t your fault.”

Lir’s head snaps towards him at both the words and the sympathy within them. Not that it’s unusual for cops to know how their partner feels, but usually that takes years of working together, not days, so either he’s particularly good and reading the people around him or he’s projecting. “What?”

“The new victim,” he explains. “Wasn’t anything you could have done. We had and have nothing to go on, and you chasin’ that guy didn’t get this one killed. Or,” his mouth twitches, “do you think you’re better than every other cop on the force?”

“Of course not,” she protests hotly. “I just . . .”

Dante cracks the window and lights a cigarette that he pulls from the pack in his door. “Look,” he says, exhaling smoke, “I get it. You’re new, gotta prove yourself, and this guy is a pain in the ass. But you ain’t got any control over him, or what he does. Only thing you can do is learn, be better, so you can catch him.”

It’s spoken in the same tone he might have used to console a weeping toddler, and she bristles. “You don’t know me.”

“No, but I read your file.” He glances at her as he tosses the cigarette, still half-lit, out of the window. “You know what was top and center on the behavior section?  _ Empathetic.  _ You feel things, Thorne, feel ‘em deep, maybe, and that’s great for gettin’ inside the head of whoever’s doin’ this, but it means he can get inside  _ your  _ head, too, if you let him.”

She sinks into her seat, thinking of her dream, and gooseflesh breaks out across her arms despite the warm air blowing from the vents. “So what’s your drive, then? Fame? Promotions?”

Dante snorts. “Nah. Just don’t like bastards who hurt women, that’s all.” He pauses, then exhales slowly. “Look. I’m not gonna rat you out to Morrison. You made a decision that anyone else would’ve made. Doesn’t mean it wasn’t a fucking stupid decision, but . . . It stays between us. Right?”

There’s a rush of gratitude that she hates feeling. “Yeah. Okay.”

“Okay,” he agrees amicably.


	5. Marie Walters

_ “A void in my chest was beginning to fill with anger. _ _   
_ _ Quiet, defeated anger that guaranteed me _ _   
_ _ the right to my hurt, that believed _ _   
_ _ no one could possibly understand that hurt.” _ __   
—Rachel Sontag

»»————- ⚜ ————-««

There’s a particularly gruesome quality to death in the daylight. It’s a stark reminder that everyone will eventually die, a brush with human mortality that leaves those who see it uncomfortable, and the fact that the sun now is hidden by clouds and rain does nothing to lessen the effect. The body is located in an open expanse next to a jogging path, tucked neatly underneath a statue of an angel in prayer; all around the scene, yellow tape is strung from tree to tree to create a barrier that keeps the gathering of curious onlookers at bay, even if does nothing to stop them from craning their necks, their whispers drowned out by the patter of water on leaves and grass. Lir takes in everything else: the blood, the slick, dark asphalt of the trail, the cops in jackets with  _ Forensics  _ emblazoned on the back picking carefully through the debris.  _ So much for good forensics,  _ she thinks bitterly,  _ though he’s never left us much to begin with. _

At her side, Dante stands with his hands in his coat pockets, his expression frustrated and thoughtful. “Couldn’t have picked a better day,” he says tightly. “We’ll be lucky to get anythin’ off of her now.”

Lir nods in agreement. Back up at the top of the hill, a cruiser is idling at the curb with an officer standing by the back door and a man seated within, his face drawn and miserable. “Witness?”

“Dunno. We’ll have to ask.” He cranes his neck, then shouts, “Simmons!”

The young officer walks over hesitantly, his wide eyes darting from Dante’s face to the body and back again. Lir remembers how upset he’d been by the first victim and feels a mixture of pity and annoyance; Homicide is always tough on rookies, but if his stomach is truly this weak, he’d be better off in another department. “Yessir?”

Dante gestures to the statue. “You gonna fill us in?”

“Oh! Right. Sorry, sir.” Simmons fumbles a notepad from his belt and flips it open. She notices how he favors his right arm, which is slightly odd looking: like it was broken once and never quite healed correctly, leaving his hand resting a little crooked. He holds the notepad close to his body to keep it safe from the rain, which by now is a soft drizzle. “The call came in forty-five minutes ago. A woman walking her dog heard shouting and what she described as a girl begging, and she thought it was a domestic until someone said, and I quote, ‘I’m going to fucking kill you, you bitch.’ That’s when she phoned 9-1-1.”

It doesn’t sound at all like their killer, and her shoulders tighten with a new frustration. A distraction is the last thing they need now. “Where’s the witness?” Lir asks.

“Officer Galstin is getting her contact information, but I already took her statement,” Simmons responds, not meeting her eyes.

“And the guy in the cruiser?” she prompts.

Simmons glances over his shoulder. “He was here when Officer Galstin and I arrived. There’s blood all over him, and he had a knife on him, but he clammed up as soon as he saw us and tried to run. I caught him,” he adds with a bit of pride, and Lir looks down and notices the mud on the knees of his trousers. “We cuffed him and read him his rights, but he hasn’t said a word so far.”

Dante places his hands on his hips as he surveys the scene. “You rope everything off?”

“Yessir. Put up evidence markers on anything that looked interesting and contacted the M.E., too.”

Lir feels a begrudging speck of respect. “You did good, Simmons. Go see if Galstin is finished with the witness, then take our suspect back to the precinct and get him settled in interrogation.”

“Yes ma’am.” He flushes. “Sir.”

She waves off the mistake, then turns to Dante. “Doesn’t look like this is our guy.”

“Nope.”

“Morrison said it was.”

“That’s my fault,” Simmons interjects. “When I heard there was a killing in the park, I thought . . .”

“That’s alright, Simmons,” Dante says before Lir can think of a way to verbalize her frustration at the false alarm without ripping him a new asshole. “Rookie mistake. From here on out, get your facts  _ before  _ you come to any conclusions. Go help Galstin.”

The youth snaps a salute and hurries off, and Lir lets out a slow sigh. “Fuck,” she mutters.

“Don’t hold it against him,” Dante advises.

“I’m not,” she replies sharply. At his raised brow, she shrugs. “Like you said, rookie mistake. Doesn’t mean I can’t be pissed that someone else is out here killing women, now.”

He snorts. “At least this one was stupid enough to hang around.”

“Yeah.”

Together, they cross the clearing towards the statue and the body beneath. At first look, it’s easy enough to tell that the man who did this is not the same as the one who mutilated Sophie Marsons: this victim is clothed, her knitted scarf knotted around her throat, the front of her white shirt ripped and soaked with blood. Dante lets out a low whistle while Lir leans down, pulling a pair of gloves from her pocket and sliding them on. Trish is standing nearby, talking to a man with a camera, and Lir calls out, “You got your pictures?”

“Yup. Look to your heart’s content, Detective,” Trish replies.

Lir lifts the girl’s arms, first her right, then her left, taking in the deep cuts to her palms and fingers. Then she carefully tugs the scarf to reveal the livid bruises and claw-marks beneath before reaching into the purse on the ground next to the body. Inside is a wallet that she opens, pulling out the driver’s license. “Marie Walters.” Lir rocks back onto her heels. “She fought, and she fought hard. There are defensive wounds on her hands, and the ground is churned like she was kicking.”

Dante nods. “Reads like anger to me.”

“The scarf, though . . .” she murmurs. “Why start with strangulation, then end with stabbing?”

The leaves rustle as he crouches next to her. “You gotta think like a pissed off man, Lir. Look around you. What do you see?”

She bristles at the coaching. “A struggle.”

“Walk me through it.”

“I’m not a rookie, Dante.”

“Humor me.”

Huffing, she pushes herself to her feet and moves from marker to marker, talking as she walks. “They came down from the road. There are skid marks up here, which means one of them slipped in the mud and the other probably kept them from falling. Somewhere around here,” she pauses by a cone next to a tree, “they paused for a bit. There’s a half-smoked cigarette with lipstick on it that matches the shade she’s wearing, so she was either comfortable enough to enjoy a smoke with him or nervous enough that she needed one to calm down.”

“Right.” He stands, shoving his hands in his pockets. “So, somewhere between the cigarette and here is where the argument started. It gets heated, probably somethin’ she says going by what the witness heard. Strangling someone carries a lot of different meanings, but . . .”

“It’s a silencing tactic,” Lir finishes.

“Mm-hm. He didn’t want to hear what she had to say, and didn’t want anyone else to hear it, either. You know how long it takes someone to die from suffocation?”

The casual way he asks the question throws her so that she can’t formulate a reply other than, “No.”

“Five minutes until brain death occurs, if consistent pressure is held.” Dante looks around. “Public park, people walkin’ their dogs, he needs her quiet so no one knows what’s goin’ on. Now, even if you know what you’re doin’, strangling someone with a scarf ain’t easy. They’re in pain, fightin’ back, scratchin’ you and themselves bloody to get you to stop. You lose pressure for a second, the screamin’ starts.”

Lir’s stomach twists, shoving acid up her throat. “He didn’t know that. That’s why, when she wouldn’t stop struggling, he used the knife.”

“That’d be my guess.”

“What a bastard.” She takes off her gloves, shoving them into her pocket. “I say we go talk to the guy Galstin and Simmons pulled in.”

Dante nods in agreement. Together, they climb the rain-slick slope back up to the road, and Lir bemusedly uses the towel he offers to clean mud from her boots before getting into his car. The station is only a few blocks away, but morning rush traffic delays them so that what should have been a ten minute trip winds up taking closer to forty, and in that time Lir’s mind stews. It flips back and forth between Sophie and their newest victim, Marie Walters. Two women, murdered by men, brutalized and terrified and left to rot. Her nails bite into her palms as bile flavors her mouth. Are they connected? Or did this new bastard just get enough courage from seeing someone else do it that he decided to take a life, too? She’s so tense by the time they arrive at the precinct that her jaw aches from being clenched, and Lir forces herself to relax as they head inside to avoid any probing from her partner.

At the back of the building, down a hallway lit with bright white fluorescents, are the interrogation rooms. The three of them sit on the left-hand side, each with two doors: one for the observation room, one for holding suspects for questioning, separated by a wall and a pane of one-way glass with recording equipment set up to capture the conversations that occur within them. Lir and Dante step into Observation 1, where they find Morrison waiting, watching the man through the window.

“His name is Jonas Miller,” Morrison tells them. “No prior arrests, lives in Hyde Park with his wife, Lucille.”

Dante makes a low noise of surprise that mirrors how Lir feels. Hyde Park is one of the more affluent neighborhoods in Red Grave City, a gated community with manicured lawns, neat hedges, and large houses that start out with six figure mortgages. “He give you anything?” she asks, stepping closer to the glass.

“No. Hasn’t even asked for a lawyer.”

“Huh.” Miller certainly looks like he could afford one without a problem. Even from here, she knows that the watch on his wrist is a Rolex, that the shoes on his feet are too nice to be anything other than genuine leather, probably Gucci. “I’ll take him.”

“You?” Dante doesn’t sound angry, just startled. “Why?”

Lir is already halfway out of the door. “Because he killed a woman. Being questioned by one is going to throw him off.”

The door shuts off his answer. She pauses for a moment outside of Interrogation 1 to put her thoughts in order and breathe deeply to fight off the anger that’s been getting sharper all morning, since she first spotted that guy in the alley where Sophie died. Then she opens the door and steps inside. 

Miller doesn’t look up as she takes the seat across from him and pulls out a notepad and a pen. His eyes remain downcast, focused on his hands, and Lir takes him in. His hair is mussed, his eyes bruised and bloodshot, and there are deep scratches in the tanned skin of his face, neck, and forearms. His shirt is too dark for her to tell if there’s blood on it, and if there was any on his hands, he’d been allowed to wash it off, a fact that makes her frown even as she takes the cap off of her pen and writes the date and time at the top of the paper. “Jonas Miller,” she says. He flinches. “Want to tell me what happened this morning?”

“Nothing,” he mumbles. “I don’t know why I’m here.”

Her fingers tighten on her pen. “You were found in Tellula Park with the body of Marie Walters. Officers Simmons and Galstin both stated that you ran from the scene with a knife in your hand.” Miller says nothing. “If we test that knife, do you think it will match the wounds on Marie Walters?”

Slowly, seeming dazed, he shakes his head. “I didn’t touch her.”

_ He’s lying,  _ a voice whispers. The hair on the back of her neck stands on end at the sound of it, furious and grieving and not at all her own, and she takes a slow breath and counts to ten until the gray at the edges of her vision recedes. “We have a witness, Mr. Miller, one who will be able to identify your voice threatening to kill someone, we have your knife, which  _ will  _ match Marie Walters, and, going from the state of your face, there’s going to be enough skin under her nails to crucify you in court.  _ If  _ you cooperate with me, there’s a chance that the D.A. will work with you. If you don’t, then whatever it is you’re hiding is going to be blasted in the news. Do you understand?”

That gets his attention. He stares at her, his eyes wild, and stammers, “My wife, I-I have to get home to my wife—”

“I’m very sure Marie Walters would have liked to go home, Mr. Miller,” she says coldly.

“My wife is—”

“Why did you kill Marie Walters, Mr. Miller?”

“I never—”

“Did she threaten you, Mr. Miller?” Lir knows she should stop, that anything she gets out of this confession is going to be shit if she goads him any further, but, fuck, he’d been Mirandized and hasn’t asked for a lawyer, and it feels good to see him squirm. “According to her license, she was five foot five and weighed one-twenty. She was half your size, a college girl, so I’m struggling to see how she could have been so dangerous that you stabbed her eighteen times and strangled her with a scarf. What did she do to piss you off, Mr. Miller? What could a girl like that have possibly—”

“She lied to me!” he shouts, slamming his hands on the table. Lir refuses to let that frighten her, because there’s a gun at her hip and a knife in her boot, and he’d be an idiot to come after a cop with all the trouble he’s already about to get himself into. “She swore that she was on the pill, that she didn’t want anything other than a-a partner, and then she called me and said she was pregnant and demanded I leave my wife or she’d tell, and I . . . I . . .” He tapers off, hiding his face in his hands. “I just wanted her to shut up. Just once. She was such a bitch, always mouthing off, I just wanted her to shut the hell up for once.”

“So you killed her,” Lir states flatly.

Whimpering, he nods. A wave of revulsion rises within her; here is a man who looks no older than forty, with a million-dollar house and a wife, wearing designer brands, a man who had decided that he wanted to get his dick wet with a girl half his age, who had killed that girl like she was gutter trash when the consequences of his actions came to fruition, and he’s snivelling like an infant. “Did it ever occur to you, Mr. Miller, that it takes two to cause a pregnancy?” Her voice is ice. “Or did you simply assume that you were too good for a condom?”

His head snaps up, his mouth agape with shock. “What—”

“This is how it reads to me, and how it will read to a jury.” She pushes back her chair and stands. “You entered into a relationship with a college student, telling who knows how many lies to your wife. Did you promise Marie Walters that you loved her? That you would leave your wife for her? And then,” she continues, ignoring his sputtering, “when she, quite naturally, got pregnant—birth control fails, Mr. Miller, all the time—you killed not only her, but her unborn child, all because you were too much of a coward to deal with your actions. You are nothing more and nothing less than a repugnant, low-life, inexcusable—”

The door slams open, and Morrison steps inside, his face passive but his eyes furious. “Thank you, Detective. We’ve gotten what we need from him. The interview is now over.” To Miller, he says, “Officer Simmons will be along to book you while the D.A. decides which charges to press. Excuse us.”

Lir follows Morrison when he leaves, knowing that she’s fucked up but too wired to care. In the hall, Dante is waiting, and he gives a little shake of his head when he catches sight of whatever expression is on her face.  _ Don’t,  _ he mouths. 

Morrison turns on her. “Are you out of your mind, Detective Thorne? Do you want that man to walk free? Because  _ that  _ is the only reason I can think of to explain why you’d behave so irresponsibly.”

“I got the confession,” she starts.

“A confession that we’ll be lucky to get admitted,” Morrison snaps. “One look at that and whatever defense attorney Miller hires will petition to get it thrown out on the basis of coercion! You didn’t question him, Thorne, you rode his ass and degraded him, and we’re lucky that he was read his rights and denied an attorney, because those are the  _ only  _ things that might sway a judge into keeping the confession intact.”

“He killed her!” Her voice raises despite her attempts to keep it under control, and she sees Dante wince from the corner of her eye. “It wasn’t some accident. He took a  _ knife  _ with him, he fucked her and then he stabbed her  _ eighteen goddamn times!  _ And you think I rode him too hard?”

Morrison’s mouth twists. “You might want to reconsider your tone unless you want to be working vice from now on, Thorne.”

She opens her mouth, only for Dante to step forward, his hands raised placatingly. “Chief, it’s been a long day. Hell, a long weekend. Neither of us have slept more than four hours, we lost a suspect this morning, and we’re getting nowhere with Marsons. Thorne’s a damn good detective, but even good ones have bad moments from time to time.”

Morrison cuts his eyes from Dante to Lir. “That true, Thorne?”

As much as it humiliates her to do so, she takes the lifeline Dante has given her. “Yessir.”

“Fine.” Morrison studies her a moment longer before turning away. “Even if we lose the confession, forensics will get enough to nail him. You go home and rest. I don’t want to see you for twenty-four hours, understood? I’ll need that long just to clean up this mess.”

She nods, and he glances at her over his shoulder. “I expected better from you, Thorne.”

Then he’s gone, leaving her to wallow in the unpleasant heat of chastised embarrassment, swallowing thickly against the tears that prick her eyes. A hand grips her shoulder, but she refuses to look at Dante, merely shrugging when he says, “Let me give you a lift home,” wishing, not for the first time, that her father was still around to give her advice.


	6. Remembrance (Fear)

_ “Even if she be not harmed, _ _   
_ _ her heart may fail her in so much and so many horrors; _ _   
_ _ and hereafter she may suffer-- _ _   
_ _ both in waking, from her nerves,  _ _   
_ _ and in sleep, from her dreams..” _ __   
—Bram Stoker

»»————- ⚜ ————-««

Dante doesn’t bother to turn on the radio for this trip. It’s a first, and it unsettles her. From the few things she’s learned about him since they met—the confidence that borders on arrogance, the fleeting moments of kindness beneath the gruff exterior, the fact that he loves and hates cop-house coffee—the affinity for classic rock is the most prominent, and the lack of it now only cements how badly she has messed up. Humiliation had given way to shame once she was out of the precinct, and now shame is circling right back to anger, though this time it is mostly aimed at herself. She hasn’t even been in Red Grave City for four days yet and she’s gone and shown herself to be an unreliable loose cannon as far as her new Chief is concerned, someone who might not be suited for the type of crime that comes with big cities. 

Needing something to break the silence, she leans over to fiddle with the knobs, only for Dante to shut the radio off as soon as she’s turned it on. “Not now,” he says shortly.

Lir bristles, tries not to. “What? You’re gonna sit over there like I’m some sort of, I don’t know, wild woman who might claw your eyes out?”

“No,” he replies.

“Then let me turn the damn radio on.”

“No,” he says again. “I’m gonna talk, and I want you to take that chip off your shoulder and listen. You can bitch at me when I’m done.”

“Fuck you.”

Dante curses as he pulls into a spot outside of her building and puts the car in park. “That’s what got you into this mess. You let your temper get the best of you and, yeah, Morrison was right to send you home because you nearly fucking ruined our chances to put Miller away with your little stunt in interrogation.” He runs his hands through his hair, upsetting the strands so they fall around his face. “I get it, Lir, I fuckin’ get it. I’m just as pissed as you are. You think I like that there’s a guy out there hurtin’ women? Fuck no! I hate it, and I hate that we can’t seem to get a lead on him. But Miller ain’t him, and you forgot that.”

“He’s just as bad!” She protests hotly. “Marie didn’t deserve—”

“There’s a reason we don’t call victims by their first names,” he points out quietly. “You’re gettin’ too close, Lir, too personal with this. Any other time, I’d say that’s a good thing, maybe you could figure out what we’re missin’, but if it’s gonna send you off half-cocked . . .”

Lir understands where he’s going with that line of thinking and snaps, “Don’t you dare try to take me off of this case, Dante.”

“My first partner was a lot like you. Spitfire, hot temper, bleedin’ heart. You know what she did?” He looks at her steadily, unflinching. “She got herself killed. Found a lead and went after the perp without backup, broke protocol. Yeah, we nailed the bastard in the end, but only ‘cause she put a bullet in his thigh just before he beat her to death.”

It’s a sad thing to think of. If she weren’t so pissed, she might have offered sympathies, but all she can think of is Sophie Marsons, like she’s a dog and this is the bone she can’t stop chewing on even when her obsession turns it to splinters that cut into her gums. “I’m going to find this guy, Dante. I’m going to feed him his balls and crucify him. You hear me?”

He moves so quickly that she has no time to react at all. One minute, he’s in his seat, turned to face her; the next, he’s over the console, one hand braced on the back of her seat and the other on the handle of the door, his arms a cage that trap her in her seat. Being cramped up like this, locked between the bulk of his body and the door of the car, Lir fights to keep her breathing controlled. The warm, humid air inside the cab is heavy with the scents of sweat and cologne and the unique musk of damp fabric, but under all of that is something else, something  _ other,  _ that makes her so keenly aware of the space he takes up that it almost frightens her. No, not frightens; it's not fear that makes her pulse race, or her palms damp, or her throat dry. It's desire, plain and simple, to be touched, to be held, to be kissed.

To feel human again.

Dante is so close that it would take no effort at all to sit up and seal her lips over his. A desperate, foolish move that would cost her her reputation and her career—it's always the woman's fault in matters of seduction, whether she initiates it or not—but the idea sticks once it's been born. Easy, sure. And then she could invite him up, see how the stubble on his jaw feels on her breast, and when Morrison calls her into his office to force a resignation she can look at him and say,  _ "Sorry, boss, but I really needed a good lay." _

"Back off," she hisses through clamped teeth. Dante doesn't move, just watches her, his eyes half-lidded and burning where they linger on her face. "Back  _ off,  _ Redgrave."

"You gonna go off and get yourself killed?" he rumbles.

Her shoulders tense. "No."

"I want your word, Thorne."

The fact that he's back to using her last name stings after hearing him use her first for a scant twelve hours. "Fine. You have my word. I'm going to sleep, and then I'll see you at the precinct." Saying the words aloud soothes her a bit. They make her sudden need for him make sense: it's just sleep-deprivation. Just exhaustion.

He studies her for a moment longer before he nods and moves away, settling back into his seat. “It’s . . .” Dante checks his watch. “ . . . noon. On Monday. Christ. Morrison doesn’t want you back in until tomorrow. Trust me,” he says wryly at her frown, “you come back in today, he’s gonna put you on administrative work for a week. Go shower. Sleep. Get somethin’ to eat. I’ll pick you up tomorrow.”

“What about you?” she mutters, playing with the door handle.

“I’m gonna crash myself, then catch up with Trish, do the report on Miller.”

He’s taking tasks off of her plate, and she mumbles her gratitude as she climbs out of the car and heads inside. Her apartment is cool and dark, blessedly silent. Lir stands in her living room and looks around and the half-unpacked boxes and the clothes she’d left on the floor Saturday afternoon and lets out a long sigh before getting to work. First she picks up her mess, depositing her stuff in the hamper and hanging her coat up on the back of the bedroom door to dry, then she slowly peels out of her damp clothing and takes an indulgently long, hot shower. She makes her bed, puts on pajamas, towels her hair and combs it out, wondering idly if it’s time for another trim. Then she returns to the living room, making a pit stop in the kitchen for a glass of wine and to toss a frozen burrito in the microwave before grabbing a box and settling on the floor with it.

It’s labelled  _ books a-c,  _ and she takes a sip of her wine as she opens it and begins laying the books in neat stacks around her. She’d done her best to keep them organized while packing, but some things got moved around to make them fit in the box, and she puts them back in order and carries them over to the bookcases on one of the windowless walls. There’s four cases total; slowly, breaking only to eat her burrito and refill her wine, Lir fills them with a variety of novels ranging from biographies to horror stories to mysteries to true crime accounts, until all of the boxes with  _ books  _ scrawled on them are empty and collapsed for recycling. She eyes the next stack, these labelled  _ living room,  _ then the clock on the microwave. It’s just after five, and Lir shakes her head and puts her empty glass in the sink. Exhaustion is making her nauseous now—that and too much aspirin and wine on a stomach with only a burrito to keep them company—and she just wants to sleep.

_ The pizza,  _ she thinks, climbing into bed and putting her phone on her nightstand.  _ We never ate that fucking pizza. Wonder who did? _

Lir slips easily and quietly into dreams of her father. In them, she is five years old, and her father, a man named Augustus Thorne, a man who would die when he answered a robbery call at a convenience store and was bludgeoned to death with a bat, is sitting in his recliner, a dusty, threadbare thing that her mother only half-feigns horror at having in their den. She is at his knee, working a puzzle that she has completed before, bright splashes of color in the shape of a barn, a horse, a cow on large pieces fit for a toddler’s hands. The room is warm, painted with early July sunshine, and motes of dust dance lazily in the air. Soon, he will put away the newspaper he reads every day, and drink the last of his coffee, and then he will take her outside until he has to leave for his shift. Maybe they’ll work on the truck that runs on a prayer, though she hopes that he’ll push her on the swing instead. The truck scares her.

It scares her mother, too. It is a slipshod, bastard of a truck, assembled from whatever serviceable parts her father could find, the paint mismatched and rusting, the engine a beast that snarls and sputters when awoken. Her father calls it the Beast with the same affection he uses when speaking of the stray dog that sometimes sleeps on their porch, a loving sort of exasperation that makes all of his threats of selling the truck empty. Her mother simply calls it dangerous.

“Lirael,” her father says, folding up his paper with a dry snap that has her looking up from her puzzle. “What do you say we go out, get some ice cream?”

It’s more than her five year old mind ever dares to hope for, and she leaps up with a squeal. “Can we, papa? Really?”

“Yes. But you have to promise not to tell your mother.” He makes a grave face, running his fingers across his mouth in a zipping noise. “And to eat all of your dinner tonight. Otherwise we can’t go.”

“I promise, papa!”

“Even the peas.”

Her face screws up in disgust that only momentarily tempers her excitement. “Do I have to?”

“Mm-hm.” Her father nods sagely. “Peas are good for you.”

“Okay.” Her shoulders sag. “Even the peas.”

He smiles then, the crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes deepening to slashes that run to his temples. “That’s my girl. Clear away your puzzle and put on your shoes.”

Lir dutifully does as she’s been told, her tongue peeking from between her lips as she carefully puts the pieces back in the box and carries it to the shelf. Then she gets her sneakers from the rack by the back door and puts them on, whispering, “Over, under, pull it tight. Make a bow, pull it through, do it right.” Her mother had taught her that little rhyme in January, wanting her to know how to tie her shoelaces before she started kindergarten in fall, and, even though her loops are uneven and the knot crooked, she gets them both done on the first try.

Her father takes her hand and leads her outside, where he helps her into the car her mother insisted he buy when they learned they were having a child. Lir waits as patiently as she can while he fastens her seatbelt through the slots of her booster seat and checks to make sure the safety lock is on. He ruffles her hair affectionately before closing the door, and she sits up straight to look out of the window as he gets in the front and starts the car. Their little house, set on a nice yard, is twenty minutes from town, and Lir always loves the rides there and back. She likes to count the different things she sees, pointing out the other cars and houses and people to her parents, who humor her. Sometimes, her father will play little games like  _ I Spy  _ with her while he drives, too. 

Today, though, he’s silent, not even the radio turned on, and Lir squirms uncomfortably in her seat, which feels too small. “Lirael,” he says quietly, “what are you doing, girl?”

She blinks, looking at him now through eyes that are now adult, the handles of the booster seat digging painfully into her hips, which are too wide despite her slender frame to fit within it anymore. “Father?”

Augustus does not turn to her. Horrified, she watches as the back of his head begins to distort, caving in on itself as though there are phantom blows striking him, and his voice is hoarse and full of blood when he speaks. “You can’t deny what you see, Lirael. You can’t drown it in a bottle, or between a woman’s legs, or with a man between your own.”

“I don’t see anything,” she whispers, afraid. Her hand scrambles for the door, needing to get out, only for the safety lock to keep it firmly closed. “Please, papa, please, I don’t understand.”

“Sure you do,” he replies, as amicably as a dead man can. “You understand just fine, and you’d understand better if you’d stop running. That’s what I did, girl, remember? Oh, how your mother and I would fight over it, until she told me she wanted a divorce. I never did apologize for you hearing that, did I?” He sighs wistfully. “You were never meant to.”

“I’m not running,” she protests weakly.  _ God, let me wake up, please, God, I can’t do this right now.  _ It’s bad enough that she has to deal with spirits—or  _ hallucinations, _ as her mother had called them, when Lir was too old for  _ imaginary friends  _ to work—but for it to be her  _ father _ , when she’s asleep and supposed to be  _ safe  _ . . .

Only now does he turn, and she sees the terror of her father’s face, or what she always imagined it looked like before the undertaker took care of him. One eye is turned, staring blankly at nothing, bulging from its socket like it’s going to fall out at any moment, blood streams from his crushed, broken nose and cut lips, and his teeth, when he smiles, are broken and jagged. There’s a stench of rot in the air, of dead things long buried, and she cranes back into her seat, her throat clogged with clawing panic. “You’ve been running for twenty years,” he says, “but you can’t anymore.”

Then there is a blaring horn and Lir screams as a truck careens towards them, one of the big ones used to haul freight and cargo, it’s headlights baleful eyes that pierce the cabin of their car as it strikes them head-on, glass shattering and steel screaming as it crumples—

Lir wakes, the piercing ringing of her scream echoing through the bedroom. She takes one shuddering breath, then another, before she crumples, sobs tearing harshly from her aching throat as she curls her knees to her chest and hugs them as if to keep herself from falling apart. How long has it been since she dreamed of her father? Since she graduated the academy, maybe, and the shock of seeing him like  _ that,  _ torn and broken, brings a grief she hasn’t felt since she was ten. Knowing that she is powerless against it, she allows it to flow freely, her tears soaking her shirt where they fall into it, the fear-scent of her sweat pungent and sharp.  _ Father, father,  _ she thinks, shaking.  _ Why did you have to die? You should have known better than to answer that call, you should have taken back-up, you should have cleared the fucking store before you went in, playing the goddamn hero! _

When the crying has tapered off to sniffles and her limbs have stopped trembling enough for her to move, she stands. In the bathroom, Lir washes her face in the dark, not wanting to see her puffed eyelids or reddened cheeks, splashing frigid water on her skin until the shock of it stops her tears completely. Then she pats herself dry with a towel and strips to wipe the sweat from her body before pulling on her bathrobe and returning to the living room. Her nightmare is too fresh, too vivid, for her to go back to bed. 

The clock on the microwave reads  _ 3:01.  _ The witching hour, and she stares at it dully for a moment before settling onto her couch and turning on the television. Lir flips through the channels until she finds a rerun of  _ Red Dragon,  _ and she pulls the duvet from the back of the couch over her shoulders as she settles into the familiarity of the world of Hannibal Lecter and Will Graham. In the morning, she’ll call Dante, needing human company to truly feel at ease again.

For now, she watches as Will Graham shouts at a reporter and waits for the fear to let her go.


	7. Gebunden

_“There is a stubbornness about me that never can bear to be frightened at the will of others. My courage always rises at every attempt to intimidate me.”_ _  
_ —Jane Austen

»»————- ⚜ ————-««

The diner Dante takes her to is the standard cop hangout. Every city has at least one, with an interior that hasn’t been updated since the 1950s, a cook who knows everyone by name, and food and coffee that are remarkably good considering the otherwise outdated, somewhat grungy appearance the place has. Sitting in one of the corner booths that overlooks the busy street outside, Lir picks at her omelette, only half-interested in it and the crisp hashbrowns accompanying it. Some sort of jazz plays from a jukebox by the door, soft enough that conversations can be held easily yet loud enough that eavesdropping would be difficult. It reminds her of Sunday afternoons when her father was alive, how he and her mother would dance on the worn living room rug to Frank Sinatra or Billie Holiday or Duke Ellington, but that leads her back to her dream the night before, which is quite effective at dampening her already non-existent appetite.

In a lull while the record switches, Dante sets down his fork and reaches for his coffee, studying her over the rim. “Hate to say it, but you look like hell. Rough night?”

“Something like that,” she replies. When he opens his mouth, she shakes her head. “I don’t want to get into it. Just bad dreams, nothing more than that.”

He gives an idle shrug. “Suit yourself. You gonna eat that?”

With a grimace, she pushes her plate over to him, and he swaps it for his own empty one before setting in on the omelette, which he slathers with ketchup. It makes her wince, but to each their own is what she tries to tell herself, taking a sip from her own coffee. Both of them have been beating around the bush since he picked her up—Miller, her behavior yesterday—and she decides to put an end to it. “How much shit am I in?”

Dante chews thoughtfully for a moment before swallowing. “With Morrison? No more than you should be. Job’s safe, and he’s not looking to put any marks on your record. Apparently the D.A. said that, even without the confession, there’s enough evidence to nail Miller.” He pauses, then gives her a grin. “Honestly, I think Morrison’s glad someone ripped into that sorry sack of shit.”

“You think?” She tries to picture the gruff Chief being pleased about anything and finds that she can’t.

“Sure. Hell, he did himself when he was a detective, from what I heard.” He chuckles. “Might not seem like it now, but he used to be pretty wild, back in the day. Didn’t really settle until he started climbing the ranks, and that’s probably only because you can’t let those higher-up pricks get under your skin.”

She supposes that it makes sense. Relaxing, Lir leans back in her seat, watching as he devours the rest of their breakfast at a speed that leaves her surprised he doesn’t choke on it. “Thanks.”

“Huh?”

“For sticking up for me. I appreciate it.”

He looks a bit embarrassed as he rubs the tip of his nose. “Ah, no thanks needed. We’re partners, right? Gotta look out for each other. Besides, I wanted to throttle the guy myself. Your tongue-lashing just beat me to it.” She smiles, but the expression fades when he asks, “You do that in Fortuna?”

“No,” she says shortly.

Dante gives her a curious look. “You know, I never did ask what led you to comin’ here.” At her frown, he adds, “Don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. I’m just askin’.”

Lir mulls over the best way to answer, trying to figure out the short version of her life. “My dad was a cop. Never really made it higher than a beat cop, but he liked his job and what he did. It got him killed eventually.”

“Shit, Lir, I’m sorry.”

She waves it off. “Guess that’s what drove me to join the force, too. Thought I could make a difference, you know?” He nods. “Anyway, Fortuna was nice. But there was a lot of whispering about how a woman made detective, a lot of insinuations, a lot of . . . I dunno. It’s a pretty old-school place. Women raise families, men work. I wanted to get out before I wound up dead-locked with people I couldn’t stand.”

“Why Red Grave?” 

“My father was here a long time ago. We moved to Fortuna when I was . . . I must have been around six, I think.” Lir toys with her coffee mug. “Other than that, I don’t have a real reason other than I liked the look of it the most.” Looking up at him, she asks, “What about you?”

“Me? Been here my whole life, born and raised.” He smiles, but it seems a little haunted, a little bitter. “My ol’ man was a real piece of shit. Joined the force to stop people like him.”

She opens her mouth to ask him how awful his father was. Wife beater? Drunk? Absent? Then she realizes that it’s, quite frankly, not her place, particularly as he’d done her the courtesy of not prying into her past, and she swallows the questions, feeling them burning in the back of her throat. “I’m sorry,” she murmurs.

Like her, he waves it off. “Doesn’t matter now. ‘Bout the only thing I got from him was my good looks, anyway.” Lir huffs a laugh without meaning to, and he winks at her before sobering up. “Anyway, Miller might be taken care of, but we’re still at a dead-end on Marsons. Got any ideas?”

“Did we get anything from the DMV?”

“No, and it’s not lookin’ like we will. You know about their feud with the police?” She shakes her head. “Ah, well. Lotta immigrants go there to get a license or permit or anythin’ that helps ‘em out, especially the ones who didn’t go through legal channels. DMV wanted law enforcement to agree not to send info to the feds, our city’s commissioner wouldn’t agree, now we’re stuck.”

Lir swears loudly enough that a nearby table gives her disgruntled glares. “Perfect. Guess we need to set up a tip line.”

“Yeah.”

“Fuck.” She slumps down. It’s a necessary step to take, and Lir knows that it is, but tip lines are the bane of almost all investigations. Once they’re open, everyone calls in, some with information that’s actually relevant, some who just want to nose around, some who want their fifteen seconds of fame, others with nothing more to offer than a conspiracy theory or a completely fabricated story that winds up wasting precious time and resources. Add in the sheer manpower needed to run them, and they move from being a hassle to a nuisance. “Guess I’ll bring it up to Morrison when we go in.”

* * *

Having to wear a suit ranks fairly high on Lir’s list of uncomfortable experiences. Even tailored well—which hers is, something that had cost her a pretty penny due to her short stature—it is stiff, itchy, and the tie at her throat feels choking. Her only solace is that Dante looks equally put out, though she’s got a suspicion that it has more to do with the cameras, as she’s never seen him in casual clothes. At the podium is Morrison, telling the city that there is a killer, that caution _must_ be exercised in all things, and that they are opening up a tip line for anyone who might have seen something or knows someone who has. Lir had insisted that they not ask for people who saw the perpetrator; it’s too hard, she had argued, for someone to view their neighbor as a potential murderer. But a witness? They could spin that story all day, and they were more likely to get relevant information from it.

“In short,” Morrison says, “we have found ourselves, in the wake of this tragedy, seeking any information that will aid us. Please call the number at the bottom of your screens if you think that you know something, no matter how big or small it might be.” He takes a deep breath. “We’ll take your questions now.”

A reporter at the front sticks up his hand. “Does this have any relation to the Devil’s Knight case?”

Dante tenses, and Lir looks at him curiously as Morrison replies, “We’ve found nothing to lead us to believe so, no.”

“But wasn’t there religious paraphernalia found with the victim?” the reporter persists.

“I’m afraid I can’t answer that.” When the reporter opens his mouth again, Morrison smiles thinly. “The Devil’s Knight case, as you called it, occurred twenty years ago, and the perpetrator of those crimes died while incarcerated. We can’t rule out a copycat, if that’s what you’re implying, but we’ve found no evidence to support that theory.”

A woman lifts her arm. “I have a question for Detective Thorne.” Lir blinks, but steps up to the podium when Morrison beckons her forward, a dull wariness throbbing behind her temples. “Detective, witnesses saw you chasing a man across Fifth Street and Broad Avenue. Is he a suspect in this case?”

Lir clears her throat. “It’s possible, yes.”

“Are any efforts being made to find him?”

“As Chief Morrison explained, we—”

“Because it seems to me,” the woman continues, “as though the Red Grave police have no leads, no evidence, no suspects, and no hope of finding Sophie Marsons’ killer before he strikes again.”

Anger throbs behind her temples, yet Lir does her best to keep her face and voice neutral. “The perpetrator in this crime was meticulous, but it doesn’t mean he’s infallible. Someone out there knows him, or has seen him, or can help us build a better picture of Marsons’ life. That’s why we’re asking for your help.” 

_(“Make it personal,” Morrison says, lighting a cigar. “They’ll single you out, Thorne, because you’re a woman. When they do, you keep the focus on Marsons. You plead for information. Make them want to help.”)_

Lir takes a deep breath. “What happened to Sophie was a tragedy,” she declares. “It was senseless, it was violent, it was deplorable. She was, from what little we know of her, a bright, friendly young woman with her entire life ahead of her, someone who liked frozen margaritas with salt on the rim, who was interested in law. And all of that was brutally taken away.” Morrison touches her elbow, a sign to close her statement. “We . . . No, _I_ want to catch the one who did this. _I_ don’t want to see another victim. So, please, if you knew Sophie, if you saw her that night, call us. Or come in to speak with us. Thank you.”

She steps away, ignoring the clamoring of the press as she returns to her original spot next to Dante. As Morrison brings the press conference to a close, Dante leans closer to murmur, “Good speech.”

“Thanks,” she mutters back.

By the time the press has dispersed and she’s been allowed to change back into more comfortable clothing, the phones in the precinct are ringing off the hook. Dante spots her coming out of the locker room and grimaces, one pressed to his ear. Simmons is fumbling reassurances to someone on a different line. Everywhere, cops are speaking, passing notes, scrawling hurriedly to catch whatever information they can before moving on to the next tip. Lir takes in the chaos and the undercurrent of tension in the air, and then she heads to her desk, on which the phone rings shrilly. She answers, cradling the headset against her shoulder as she hunts for a pad of paper and a pen. “Detective Thorne.”

“Did you enjoy the spotlight, Detective?” 

The voice, distorted as it is by some sort of device, sends a shiver down her spine. Her heart pounds in her chest as she stares blankly into a drawer, the bitter taste of fear coating her throat. She doesn’t know how, but she knows without a shadow of a doubt that this is their killer, that he, like so many others, now wants to make himself known. She grabs blindly and tosses what turns out to be a pack of staples at Dante, who startles and glares at her, only for his eyes to widen when she gestures to the phone and mouths wordlessly, _it’s him._

“You seemed . . . uncomfortable,” the man on the other end of the line continues. “Quite unlike your father. He _loved_ the spotlight.”

Dante rushes into Morrison’s office, and the two emerge after a quick conversation, Morrison gesturing for everyone else to stop talking. An eerie silence descends over the precinct as Lir asks, “My father?”

Morrison presses the speaker button, and that garbled voice fills the room. “Yes,” he replies. “I knew him, though, perhaps, not as well as you.” There’s a pause, and then a grisly noise: wet and visceral, it sounds not unlike a butcher carving meat from a bone, and there’s a hopeless sort of despair in her that she sees on Dante’s face, along with fury, because it is the sound of another victim being claimed. “Tick tock, Detective,” the man intones, and then the line clicks and the phone goes dead in her hand.

* * *

Morrison sends her home with an escort that remains parked on the curb outside of her apartment. Having someone babysit her is irritating at best and infuriating at worst—Dante is also equally at risk, but no one is batting an eye over _his_ safety—but Lir understands the need for it. The killer had called _her,_ had mentioned knowing her father, and her face had just been broadcast on live television. So, the idea that he might choose to come after her next isn't entirely unfounded. Still, as she opens the curtains and peers out, watching one of the officers lean on the door of his cruiser and smoke, she wishes that she had some true peace.

Yet she doesn't want to be alone, either.

Moving to her sofa, she grabs her phone from a cushion and scrolls through her scarce contact list. Joan's number sits comfortable below Dante's and above Morrison's, and Lir dials it, listening to the beeping and waiting for an answer. It comes just before the call would have gone to voicemail. "Hello?"

"Hi. Joan?" Lir clears her throat. "This is Detective Thorne."

There's a pause. Then, "I remember you! You came in asking about Sophie. Sorry, sugar, as pretty as your face is, I've seen a lot since then. What can I do for you?"

"I was wondering if your offer for company still stands?" She winces as the words leave her mouth. They're too stilted, too formal, and she's too out of practice for this.

To her relief, Joan's reply this time is immediate. "Of course! Are you comin' to the bar?"

"No, I, uh . . ." She glances at the window. "I'm under surveillance right now. Because of the press conference. But I can give you my address?"

"Sure. Just let me find a pen."

Lir waits for the go ahead to rattle it off, along with instructions for which buzzer to press and what to say to the officers if they try to stop her. With that done, she calls the officers next, letting them know she has a guest coming over and what Joan looks like, agreeing when they tell her they'll still have to check her I.D. and frisk her as a precaution. Then there is nothing else to do but wait.

She tidies up her apartment, washing her few dishes and sweeping and making the bed, and she finds two bottles of wine and the meat and cheese tray the department had given her as a house-warming present a few days ago. Lir has just gotten the cellophane off when her buzzer goes off, and she hurries to let Joan inside.

The bartender arrives dressed like a knock-out, which is strange considering how casual her clothes are. From her dark turtle-neck sweater to her lightly distressed jeans, they imply comfort, but on her they look better than they ever would on the runway. Lir stumbles over her greeting as Joan hangs up her coat, and her nerves don't lessen until Joan leans over and gives her a kiss on the cheek. "I'm glad you called," she says, smiling warmly. "I was starting to think you never would."

"I'm sorry. Between work and unpacking . . ." Lir starts to say, but Joan merely shakes her head, so she changes the topic. "I have wine. Why don't you settle in and I'll get us glasses? Do you prefer red or white?"

"White, please." Joan sits on the couch while Lir heads to the kitchen, looking around curiously. "Gotta say, this is the first apartment I've been in that belongs to a detective. It's nice."

"Thanks."

Lir locates the corkscrew hiding in one of the drawers and carries the bottle of moscato and two glasses to Joan. She takes one, holding it out as Lir fills it, and while Lir prepares her own, she says, "I saw the conference. The press are some miserable bastards, huh?"

"I suppose so," Lir agrees.

"And to bring up the Devil's Knight case," Joan continues. "It's like they _want_ the whole city on edge. Probably do, now that I think about it. How else will they sell papers?"

"What was that case, anyway?"

Joan gives her a look of pure surprise. "You mean you don't know?"

"I mean, I've heard of it, I think, but . . ."

"Well." Joan takes a long drink of her wine. "Where to begin? You have to understand, I was a kid when it all went down, so you'll have to find the file to know more, but there was this guy who thought he was the modern day Jack the Ripper. Went around murdering women, leaving them in alleys like trash. Usually there'd be some sort of . . . Bible verse or somethin' similar with the bodies when they were found."

"That's horrible," Lir murmurs.

Joan nods her agreement. "It was. Women didn't go anywhere alone, 'cause he wasn't picky, other than them all being blondes. I think. Anyway, eventually he got caught and went to jail, where I guess he died. It's sort of become this . . . trademark of Red Grave, I guess. Not on any tours, but people still talk, and there's a vigil held every year for the victims."

"What was his name?" Lir leans forward, propping her head on the back of the couch. "The guy."

"I dunno. He had surviving family, so the name was kept outta the papers, even during the trial. Kids, I think."

"Mm." Lir closes her eyes, her brows pinched. Something about this feels familiar, but she can't put her finger on why. Had someone said something to her during her academy days? Or had she simply read about it at some point and tucked it away with all of the other things she doesn't need?

A hand on her thigh breaks her from her thoughts, and she blinks her eyes open to see Joan leaning towards her, her lips curled in a little smile. "But I say enough about murderers. Let's talk about us."

"Us?" Lir asks.

Then Joan kisses her, her mouth warm and tasting wine-sweet, and Lir lets thoughts of the case slip from her mind.


End file.
